How to Cross-Pollinate Your 'Animal Crossing' Flowers for More Colors

It's spring in the real world and in Animal Crossing, and since April showers bring May flowers, you're going to want to step up your floral game. While each island comes with its native species, traveling to other islands and shopping at Nook's Cranny should provide you with several types of flowers. Even then, they typically only come in a few colors. Luckily, just like IRL horticulturists, islanders with green thumbs can create new varieties through cross-pollination.

The trick to cross-pollinate your 'Animal Crossing' varietals is to plant them in a checkerboard pattern that leaves a space for the new color to sprout. The color of the two adjacent flowers in your grid determines the color of the new flower that sprouts. A hybrid can spawn nearby even if you don't use this planting strategy, but it may be more difficult. 

While the combinations vary between species, generally, if you know your color wheel, you can guess most of the combos, but below we will have a guide to each of the eight flower species we know of. Sometimes you have to cross-pollinate a flower twice to achieve a particular hybrid color.

Cosmos

These cheerful flowers come naturally in white, red, and yellow, and with those, you can make orange, pink, or black with the following combos:

• red + yellow = orange
• red + white = pink
• red + red = black

Hyacinths

When they grow natively, hyacinths come in red, yellow, and white, but you can also make orange, pink, blue, and purple.

• red + yellow = orange
• red + white = pink
• White + white = blue
• blue + blue = purple

Lilies

Natively, lilies come in red, white, and yellow, but you can grow pink, orange, and black as well.

• red + white = pink
• red + yellow = orange
• red + red = black

Pansies

Pansies come in red, yellow, blue, and white. With these, you can also make purple and orange, and it turns out if you don't have any blue, you can make them by cross-pollinating white pansies. Here are all the known combinations:

• red + red = purple
• white + white = blue
• yellow + red = orange
• blue + blue = purple
• red + red = purple

Mums

Chrysanthemums come in red, yellow, or white naturally, but you can create pink and purple as well.

• white + red = pink
• white + white = purple

Roses

Roses only come in three colors natively — red, yellow, and white — but it's the species with the most cross-pollination hybrids. Here is the full array and a few notes on some special varieties.

• red + red = pink
• red + white = pink
• red + yellow = orange
• white + white = purple
• red + red = black
• orange + purple = hybrid red

The red roses made from orange and purple look just the same as a regular red rose, but only these hybrids can make a blue rose. Two of these hybrids make one blue. 

Finally, if you get the gold watering can from bringing your island rating to five stars, you can make gold roses by watering black roses with it.

Tulips

Tulips grow naturally in red, white, and yellow. You can also create pink, orange, purple, and black.

• red + white = pink
• red + yellow = orange
• orange + orange = purple
• red + red = black

Windflowers

Otherwise known as anemones, native windflowers come in white, orange, and red, but you can also derive blue, pink, and purple in the following combinations.

• white + white = blue
• orange + red = pink
• orange + white = blue
• blue + pink = purple
• blue + blue = purple