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Colored Plant Oddities

In the past couple of months a glitch in the game has been discovered that will, with time and effort on a gardener’s part, produce colored plants in the following varieties: Flowery cactus, Spider Trees, Hops facing both directions, and Bonsai Trees.  This includes the ability to cross plants for rare white and black mutations (although already possible on the cactus, spider trees, and hops through the naturalist quest, the only way to get black and white bonsai is through a mutation crossing).  According to the following blog entry this glitch will be allowed to stay as will the resulting colored plants:

http://sakkarah-gaming.blogspot.com/2009/05/dilemma.html

Where to Start

In the swamp of your choice, you’ll need to fight boglings/bog things…and lots of them too.  Bog things and boglings carry starter seeds in plain, red, blue, and yellow.  In the past these seeds were campions, ferns, and tribarrel cactus; the new glitch replaces the tribarrel cactus seed with a random seed instead.  This random seed can, occasionally, be the new flowery (four-barrel) cactus.

Seeds can be identified by dropping them into a  seedbox (year 4 Veteran reward) or by using poppies dust.  It could take up to several hundred seeds before you find one of each color to work with.  There’s really no reason to collect and ID plain seeds, since you can already get plain flowery cactus, but you will want to collect and ID every colored seed that you get.  As you ID the seeds, you are looking for ones that are named simply “[color] cactus”.  You will come up with ones that say “tribarrel cactus” or “single barrel cactus” or “prickly pear cactus”.  None of these are the ones you want; the important seeds will merely say “cactus”.

*tip* When hunting for seeds, be sure to milk your bog thing for all the boglings you can.  Each bogling carries a seed.  Most generally a couple or so will have spawned around the bog thing.  Attack the boglings first and loot them.  Then hit on the bog thing (or let him hit on you) until he spits out another bogling.  Kill this bogling and then repeat until he stops spitting out boglings.  Only then attack him enough to do serious damage and kill him; a bog thing, when low on health, will pull boglings back into himself to heal, thus losing that seed if you didn’t kill it and get it.  You should be able to get 8 or so seeds with each bog thing with this method (each bogling carries one seed and a bog thing carries two),

Growing Plants and Your First Crossings

When you get a “yellow cactus seed”, “red cactus seed”, and a “blue cactus seed” you are ready to start working on the new plants.  As far as growing plants are, nothing has changed in this respect.  You grow these exactly as you do any other seeds.  (refresher course on growing plants can be found here)  You may wish to use fertile dirt to try to speed up your growing process, depending on how impatient you are to get to the new plants, especially since you have weeks of crossing ahead of you to get all the plants and types.

Once your cactuses have popped (hit day 7) they will be ready to cross pollinate, but wait!  It’s best for you to *not* cross your very first set of plants, but rather allow them to self-pollinate.  These plants act exactly as any other old plant does, in that they can be self or cross pollinated.  Let these first ones self pollinate and you’ll have 8 seeds of each color which you can then plant and grow for crossing.

Crossing Chart

*note* the following is a list of only crosses that will result in new plants – crossings with old plants will result almost completely in getting bonsais (which we’ll cover further along on this page) – list taken from the gardening forum as posted by Erica3

*Note: “( Hop” stands for East facing Hops “) Hop” stands for South facing Hops

**Note: If you let a plant self-pollinate, it will stay the same type of plant.

 

Parent 1 Parent 2 Child OR

Parent 1 Parent 2 Child OR

Parent 1 Parent 2 Child OR

*tip*  Crossing with these new plants, since it was never intended, causes crossings that don’t make a lot of sense.  The easiest way that I’ve found to keep it straight is to concentrate on the following specific crosses to get what I want:

cactus x cactus = spider tree
spider tree x cactus = hops (
spider tree x hops ( = hops )
spider tree x spider tree = cactus
These 4 crosses can get you each kind of plant, and cuts out the uncertainty some of the other crosses can give you.

Colors act exactly as normally occurs in any plant crossing.  Remember that for crossing purposes, a plant that is dull and a plant that is bright will both work the exact same towards crossing to get a specific color.

Using the four crossings above, there is a 3 round process that will get you every plant.  Remember as you get each new color to allow one to self pollinate so that you can then have 8 more seeds of that plant; the list goes under that assumption that you will have several seeds of each plant to work with.  When crossing it does not matter which you choose as the father plant and which as the mother plant, since the child will be the same result, cross by what plants you have available to you.  You may wish to print out this list and check each crossing off as you get through it.

[unless noted to be bright, all colors are dull in this list – hops facing ( are referred to as left and ) referred to as right]

Starting plants:
yellow cactus
blue cactus
red cactus

Round 1:
red cactus x red cactus = bright red spider tree
red cactus x blue cactus = purple spider tree
blue cactus x blue cactus = bright blue spider tree
blue cactus x yellow cactus = green spider tree
yellow cactus x yellow cactus = bright yellow spider tree
yellow cactus x red cactus = orange spider tree

Round 2:
bright red spider tree x bright red spider tree = bright red cactus
bright blue spider tree x bright blue spider tree = bright blue cactus
bright yellow spider tree x bright yellow spider tree = bright yellow cactus
bright red spider tree x bright blue spider tree = purple cactus
purple spider tree x purple spider tree = bright purple cactus
bright blue spider tre x bright yellow spider tree = green cactus
green spider tree x green spider tree = bright green cactus
bright red spider tree x bright yellow spider tree = orange cactus
orange spider tree x orange spider tree = bright orange cactus
red cactus x bright red spider tree = bright red hops left
red cactus x orange spider tree = red hops left
red cactus x bright yellow spider tree = orange hops left
yellow cactus x bright yellow spider tree = bright yellow hops left
yellow cactus x green spider tree = yellow hops left
yellow cactus x bright blue spider tree = green hops left
blue cactus x bright blue spider tree = bright blue hops left
blue cactus x purple spider tree = blue hops left
blue cactus x bright red spider tree = purple hops left

Round 3:
orange cactus x purple cactus = red spider tree
purple cactus x green cactus = blue spider tree
green cactus x orange cactus = yellow spider tree
orange cactus x orange cactus = bright orange spider tree
green cactus x green cactus = bright green spider tree
purple cactus x purple cactus = bright purple spider tree
orange cactus x orange spider tree = bright orange hops left
green cactus x green spider tree = bright green hops left
purple cactus x purple spider tree = bright purple hops left
bright red spider tree x red hops left = bright red hops right
orange spider tree x red hops left = red hops right
orange spider tree x orange hops left = bright orange hops right
bright yellow spider tree x red hops left = orange hops right
bright yellow spider tree x yellow hops left = bright yellow hops right
green spider tree x yellow hops left = yellow hops right
green spider tree x green hops left = bright green hops right
bright blue spider tree x yellow hops left = green hops right
bright blue spider tree x blue hops left = bright blue hops right
purple spider tree x blue hops left = blue hops right
purple spider tree x purple hops left = bright purple hops right
bright red spider tree x blue hops left = purple hops right

After finishing round 3, you should now have every color and type available on the new plants.

Getting Colored Bonsai

Once you have colored plants in the new varieties (cactus, spider tree, hops) you can then use these colored plants to cross with other plants to get colored bonsai trees.  The best part of all is that, like any cross pollination, these have a chance at a mutation to black and white.  Unlike the previous crossings, where you are dealing with just crossing new plants, to get bonsai trees, you’ll want to cross these new plants with old plants (by old plants, we mean the original 17 plants from gardening years ago, campion to tribarrel cactus).  The following chart will show what bonsai you get when crossing particular plants.  Some bonsai have the same shape but are differentiated by green (pine) or pink (plum) coloring; this reference is used to explain the different bonsais.

 

plant type…x w/..	Fl.cactus	SpiderTree	Hops left.	Hops right
campions
poppies
snowdrops		common (pi)
bulrushes		common (pi)		common(pi)
lillies		uncommon(pi)	common(pi)	common(pi)
pampas	common(pi)	uncommon(pi)	common(pi)	uncommon(pi)
rushes	common(pi)	rare(pi)	uncommon(pi)	uncommon(pi)
ele ear	uncommon(pi)	rare (pi)	uncommon(pi)	rare(pi)
ferns	uncommon(pi)	common(pl)	rare(pi)	rare(pi)
ponytail	rare(pi)	common(pl)	rare(pi)	common(pl)
palm tree	rare(pi)	uncommon(pl)	common(pl)	common(pl)
century plant	common(pl)	uncommon(pl)	common(pl)	uncommon(pl)
waterplant	common(pl)	rare(pl)	uncommon(pl)	uncommon(pl)
snakeplant	uncommon(pl)	rare(pl)	uncommon(pl)	rare(pl)
pricklypear	uncommon(pl)	exceptional	rare(pl)	are(pl)
single barrel	rare(pl)	exceptional	rare(pl)	exceptional
tribarrel	rare(pl)	exotic	exceptional	exceptional

*tip* for the most variety in bonsai, use your spider trees to cross with old plants.  Also don’t bother to cross anything with campions or poppies since none of them will produce bonsai.

	Colored Vanilla Plants are Now Possible
These new oddities are available through cross-breeding, but not quite in the same manner as the previous oddities. The colored vanilla plants are completely random, just like the black and white mutations, through cross pollination of any colored versions of the barrel cactus, prickly pear cactus or tri-barrel cactus.
When harvesting your seeds the name will not display the color, only that it is A Vanilla Seed. The colored vanilla does not provide any resources, nor does it provide the ability for pollination. If you would like to obtain a full collection of the colored plants and seeds you must either go through the random crossing of the cactus varieties or find someone that is selling/trading their seeds.

 

That’s pretty much it – a glitch that has turned into a really fun exercise for gardeners, and from Sakarrah’s blog, one that sounds like it will be around for a long time.  Enjoy and good luck getting those mutations!

Research credit goes to Erica3 and the people of the Gardening Forums. Edited by Stupid Miner and kittykat. July 2009. Lady Laurel, February 2013.