Flower Breeding in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Is More Complex than You Might Think

It’s been a month since the official release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and the community has certainly spared no effort in figuring out all of the game’s hidden little systems and intricacies. Flowers are a huge part of that.

While flowers don’t really have a lot of monetary value, it is possible to breed rare hybrid flowers that can attract different kinds of bugs and improve your town rating. The general concept is that you’ll want to plant flowers of the same type next to each other, and after a couple days, you may get a new flower of a different color.

The actual process is much more complicated than that. Dataminers have found out that every flower has a different genetic code which affects the kinds of hybrids you get. Previously, flower guides (including our own) would tell you that simply planting two flowers of a specific color next to each other would get you another color, and while that could work sometimes, this isn’t entirely accurate anymore with the new info that’s been dug up.

Thanks to the efforts of the Animal Crossing community on Reddit, we now know that the genetic code of the flower is what affects hybrids. To lay down some of the basic rules, all flower seeds you buy from shops and NPCs will have the same genetic code. However, the ones you pick from mystery islands and your own island cliffs may have different codes, which will affect hybrid results.

It’s been found out that there are reproduction bonuses that come with having visitors watering your flowers, instead of you watering them yourself or having your residents do it.

You can read up more about the flower genes here, or get a better idea of how the research was done to get more info on how the genetic codes of the flowers were uncovered. If you’re just looking for a quick guide to hybrids, though, Reddit user B19F00T has made a visual guide to let you know which colors to breed together for hybrids, but you do still need a basic understanding of which seeds or genes you’ll be using for that process.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now available on Nintendo Switch.