How to get all the rare flower varieties in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Black, purple, and blue flowers are easy to get in Animal Crossing with a little patience!

Much like fruit trees, every island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons has its own native flowers. There are eight different breeds of flowers among the different islands, each available in several colors and hybrid colors. You will have access to some on your island and in the shop, but for others, you'll need to travel to friends' islands or Mystery Tour Islands. Aside from looking pretty, there are good reasons to collect different flowers too. Here at iMore, we have everything you need to know about flowers in Animal Crossing!

• What you need to know about flowers
• How to breed flowers
• All the different breeds and colors

Flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons features eight different breeds of flowers, and each comes in six to eight different colors. When you first start on your island, you will have one species of flower growing on the cliffs and available for sale from Timmy or Tommy Nook. After upgrading your shop to Nook's Cranny, you may even find additional flowers for sale. When Leif begins to visit your island, he will also sell flowers that won't normally show up in Nook's Cranny.

Flowers aren't just pretty decor, either. Some of them are used for DIY crafting. Others are necessary to attract specific bugs. While you may not feel compelled to collect every flower out there, you will at least want a variety of colors.

How to breed flowers

Once you have two or more flowers of the same species, you can plant them next to each other, and they will occasionally produce more flowers overnight. Getting more flowers is super easy if you just follow these steps:

1. Acquire two plants of the same species. These can come from your cliffs, from Nook's Cranny, from friends' islands, or even from Mystery Tour Islands. Note: single flowers can duplicate, but will not produce different colors alone.
2. Plant them close to each other, leaving space for new flowers to bloom. A checkerboard pattern works very well and optimizes space.
3. Water your flowers until they sparkle. If it's raining, you can skip this step.
4. Check the next morning for new flowers.
5. If you wish to keep breeding more flowers, carefully dig up the plants to leave space for new flowers.
6. Repeat the process.

While there is always a chance of flowers reproducing, there are ways to increase the odds:

• Watering every day will increase the odds of flowers reproducing. For the first three days, this is a 5% increase. Each subsequent day from four on adds another 5% chance that the flower will reproduce. Once the flower reproduces, the counter resets.
• Having friends visiting your island water your flowers also increases the odds. For one friend, the increase is 20%. Two friends raises that to 30%. Three friends will increase the chance by 45%. Four friends gives a 60% boost. Five or more friends will grant a 75% boost and gives the flowers a much more significant sparkle.

The colors, Duke! The colors!

Whatever your native flowers are, you will only find three colors growing in the wild or for sale from the Nooklings. However, if you plant specific colors close together, you can produce new colors like pink, purple, and even black. Some of the combinations make sense, like red roses and white roses making pink roses. Other combinations are a bit less intuitive.

Some of the potential hybrid flowers also don't look any different; however, just like with genetics in the real world, some flowers will be carrying recessive genes that can potentially produce brand new colors. Take red roses, for example. There are specific hybrids of red roses that can produce blue roses. This is the only combination that will grant blue roses, but the hybrid reds don't look any different from regular red roses. So, unless you're planning on just letting all your flowers do as they will, it's essential to keep your hybrids separate.

While the genetics for flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons are pretty complicated, some really incredible dataminers, led by Twitter user aiterusawato have worked through all the code and math that goes into crossbreeding flowers and, we here at iMore, have simplified their findings as well as testing them out ourselves for you.

Roses

You can find red, white, and yellow roses growing wild. Additionally, you can breed pink, orange, black, purple, and blue roses.

Lilies

Wild lilies come in red, white, and yellow. They can be bred in pink, orange, and black.

Hyacinths

Hyacinths can be found in white, red, and yellow in the wild. Crossbreeding can also get you pink, blue, orange, and purple hyacinths.

Pansies

If pansies are your native flower, you can find white, red, and yellow. Additionally, you can breed for blue, orange, and purple pansies.

Tulips

Tulips can be found in red, white, and yellow. Crossbreeding can get you pink, orange, black, and purple.

• Note: Hybrid orange tulips have a much higher chance of producing purple tulips (25% compared to 6.25%.)

Windflowers

Windflowers come in red, white, and orange. You can breed for pink, blue, and purple.

Mums

If you have mums as our native flower, you can find red, white, and yellow in the wild. You can also breed for pink, purple, and green.

Cosmos

Last but not least, cosmos can be found in red, white, and yellow. Crossbreeding can earn you pink, orange, and black cosmos.

Special Flowers

Two other flowers can be obtained in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, through extraordinary means: Golden Roses and Lilies of the Valley.

Gold Rose

Watering black roses with a golden watering can can occasionally result in special gold roses. You can earn the golden watering can recipe by raising your island evaluation to five stars. Alternatively, a friend with a golden watering can can either gift the can to you or can visit your island and water your roses for you.

It is crucial, however, to directly water the black roses. While the golden watering can can water nine flowers at once, only the flower directly in front of you will get a chance to make gold roses. Also, gold roses cannot reproduce on their own or with other gold roses. They can reproduce with other flowers for surprising results.

Lily of the Valley

Even rarer than golden roses, lilies of the valley are the absolute pinnacle of flowers in the Animal Crossing world. These flowers cannot be bred or even picked. These flowers will show up on their own after you've achieved a five-star evaluation. You can do this by keeping your island clean, having lots of decorations, and planting lots of plants (but not too many!) Ask Isabelle if you're not sure what to do. She will provide feedback and tips to improve your score. Once you've reached five stars, all you can really do is wait. Eventually, these super rare flowers will show up somewhere on your island.

For more details, see our how to get lilies of the valley and gold roses guide.

Questions about flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

Do you have any questions about how to get all the different flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Just want to show off your garden? Drop us a comment below, and be sure to check out our other Animal Crossing guides for all your Nook approved goodness!