Flowers

Flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons breed overnight when two of the same species sit diagonally with an empty tile between them, and our flower breeding page covers that mechanic for all eight species. This guide takes the one species with a dedicated page, the tulip, and ranks its four hybrids by how often the cross actually works. Two are coin flips, one is a one-in-four, and the last is a six percent shot that the tulips page calls the hardest tulip in the game.

The odds

Start from seeds, not wild flowers

Tulips come in seven colours in total (red, yellow and white plus orange, pink, black and purple), but only the last four table rows count as hybrids you breed. The page's first rule is to breed from seed bags, because a bagged tulip carries known genes and a wild one, even of the same colour, may not. Bags come from Nook's Cranny, from a friend's shop by mail, or from Leif, whose red tulip bag is 240 Bells; his permanent stall on Harv's Island never runs out. Wild tulips do turn up on the cliff tops, reached by ladder, and red ones can appear for players with an April or May birthday.

50 percent: pink and orange

The two easy hybrids each need one red parent. Red beside white gives pink half the time; red beside yellow gives orange half the time. Plant them in the diagonal grids from the breeding page, water every tile, and the empty squares fill within a night or two. Orange matters beyond its colour, because it is a parent in both of the harder rows.

25 percent: black

Black tulips come from three crosses, two reds, two hybrid reds, or two oranges, at a one-in-four rate. The page's advice once the first one appears is to stop breeding and start cloning: a single black tulip with empty tiles around it copies itself, and the breeding page puts the cloning layout at nine clear spaces. Cloning a rare colour beats rerolling the cross.

6 percent: purple

Purple is the tulip the page warns about. It comes from orange and orange, black and black, or black and yellow, and the stated odds are 6 percent, so most nights nothing happens. The workable plan is to clone a large bed of oranges first (the 50 percent row) so that many pairs are eligible each night, then clone the first purple the moment it shows. Hybrids also feed the Scenery score on our five-star rating page, and a bed of white flowers of any species is where the 2,400-Bell orchid mantis on the bugs guide likes to sit.

Frequently asked questions

Which tulip is hardest to breed?

Purple, at 6 percent per eligible pair per night. Black is 25 percent, and pink and orange are both 50 percent.

Where do I buy tulip seeds?

Nook's Cranny sells bags, friends can post them, and Leif sells them on his island visits and at his Harv's Island stall. Other species and the rest of the island are covered on the Animal Crossing: New Horizons hub.