# Hybrid Flowers Full Genetics Guide



## Bioness

Animal Crossing New Leaf and New Horizons both use a surprisingly complex genetics system. Every flower has its own unique genes it carries, and you cannot always tell what recessive genes a flower carries based solely on its color. The system uses basic Mendelian genetics, the same system that’s normally taught in school. Since it’s Mendelian genetics, you can also make use of punnett squares to predict offspring.

The gene system is able to record up to 4 different genes for each flower, however some species use less than 4. The majority of the species in New Leaf use only 3 genes, with roses using 4 and carnations using 2. It's currently unknown how many genes the New Horizon-only species use.

Flowers from seed bags always have the same genes, so these are vital for being able to predict what offspring you’ll get.

In New Leaf, both flowers found on Island tours, as well as flowers planted by villagers, have the same genes as the seed bag flowers and can be safely used for breeding.

In New Horizons, hybrids found on rare islands have different genes than those you would normally get by breeding the seed bag parents. Often these flowers have the genes necessary to produce third generation hybrids (e.g. purple windflowers and pansies). It’s currently unknown if base color flowers on mystery islands have the same genes as seed bag flowers.







Image source: Reddit

Google Document with in depth information: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ARIQCUc5YVEd01D7jtJT9EEJF45m07NXhAm4fOpNvCs/mobilebasic


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## Cosmic_Insanity

A lot of the data explained in the doc goes straight over my head, haha. What does this mean for combining two hybrids to create more hybrids? IE: is it plausible to breed blacks together to get more blacks?


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## tanisha23

Lol, I just posted a thread trying to get this information via people's responses, so thanks for sharing!


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## Bioness

Cosmic_Insanity said:


> A lot of the data explained in the doc goes straight over my head, haha. What does this mean for combining two hybrids to create more hybrids? IE: is it plausible to breed blacks together to get more blacks?



Yes! In fact the easiest way to get more hybrid colors is to breed them with themselves. Flowers will also clone themselves occasionally. Blue Roses, Green Mums, Purple Pansies, Purple Hyacinths, and Purple Wildflowers are best obtained this way. However if you have no black flowers, then following this guide using seeds only will give you the best results (Black Cosmos will take some patience though).

The data is basic genetics. If you have two parents with blues eyes, their children will also have blue eyes, however it is also possible for them to not have blue eyes. Still having two blue eyed parents yields far greater blue eyed children, than a single blue eyed parents, or two parents with brown eyes but with recessive blue eye genes.


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## Cosmic_Insanity

Bioness said:


> Yes! In fact the easiest way to get more hybrid colors is to breed them with themselves. Flowers will also clone themselves occasionally. Blue Roses, Green Mums, Purple Pansies, Purple Hyacinths, and Purple Wildflowers are best obtained this way. However if you have no black flowers, then following this guide using seeds only will give you the best results (Black Cosmos will take some patience though).
> 
> The data is basic genetics. If you have two parents with blues eyes, their children will also have blue eyes, however it is also possible for them to not have blue eyes. Still having two blue eyed parents yields far greater blue eyed children, than a single blue eyed parents, or two parents with brown eyes but with recessive blue eye genes.


Thanks for the explanation! I'm considering just buying a couple of each colour of hybrid and multiplying them that way, lol


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## Bell_of_the_Ball

This guide is very nicely done, but I'm afraid it's incomplete. I have successfully bred two black tulips to get a purple tulip in ACNH. I did this on my first try at making hybrids, so the probability of getting a purple tulip from two black tulips should be reasonably high. I suggest you add this to your post, if not the helpful chart!


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## sdw4527

Bell_of_the_Ball said:


> This guide is very nicely done, but I'm afraid it's incomplete. I have successfully bred two black tulips to get a purple tulip in ACNH. I did this on my first try at making hybrids, so the probability of getting a purple tulip from two black tulips should be reasonably high. I suggest you add this to your post, if not the helpful chart!



It's definitely not optimized for every combination, but black + black for tulips is definitely a combo that isn't mentioned, but has a high chance at purple (assuming it has the right genes). Orange + Orange will produce black at a 19% rate and purple at a 6% rate. So, something I did to increase chances at purple was to move all blacks produced from orange + orange into a separate plot. That way you have 2 separate plots each with a chance at producing purple. Double the chances!

This is an excellent website to experiment with different combos. You might discover a combo that a guide didn't mention  https://gardenscience.ac/


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## zantaff

Quick question. If I have 4 flowers in a row with space around them, does that mean there's a chance for 4 offspring (each breeding with another) or do they pollinate in pairs resulting in only 2 offspring?

This is more of a space-planning question I suppose.


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## MerriWalker

Hi there, thanks very much for your links and your chart! I've finally plucked up the courage to start working on Roses, and working towards a *Blue Rose*.

I think there's a slight issue with your interpretation of *Orange* and Purple roses.  You're right that there is a 25% chance of getting the kind of Red rose that can give a Blue offspring; however, there is also a 25% chance of getting a *different* kind of Red rose that *cannot* give a blue offspring just with other reds. This might be really frustrating, because your "Hybrid red" roses could be a complete wild goose chase if you're not careful, particularly if the expectation is that you might have to wait months at a time for a blue rose even if it *is* the right type!

The upshot of this point though is it also suggests a much simpler way to reach Blue roses than going around the house of colours - the "wrong" type of Red rose can be used in an extra step to make the "right" type of Red rose; in fact, we can very easily make the "wrong" type of Red roses to start a production line!

Let's step through why this is the case:

First, what is a Blue Rose?  A Blue rose has the genotype: RRYYwwss, according to the spreadsheet. This means it has to have both dominant R and Y genes. And all blue roses have this genotype.
Next, a Purple Rose is all recessive genes - the most common variety (which we get from two white parents) has the genotype rryywwss (other genotypes expressing as purple exist but don't really help us out much).
Lastly, *Orange Roses* can be found a couple of ways, but both of them result in a plant with the genotype *RrYyWWss* (again others exist but this is the one we use here). *Orange* roses carry both dominant and recessive genes in R and Y, but has both dominant W genes.

The reason we breed *Orange* and Purple roses together to get Blue roses is we want to do two things - we want to breed in w recessive genes, while keeping the dominant R and Y genes.  When we breed an *Orange *and a Purple together, we definitely breed in the recessive gene; the random factor is whether we get to keep the dominant R and Y genes. It is an equally likely coin toss whether the new flower will or will not inherit either of the two dominant genes.

So there are four possible outcomes and each one has a one-in-four chance of happening.  The one we really want is this one:
RrYyWwss - this has a red flower, but also has dominant Y and recessive w genes - let's call it *Red-Y*. Breeding these together to get a blue rose might take a while but it will get there eventually.
The other three are no good to us, because they lack either the dominant R or the dominant Y that we want.  Fortunately, we can easily rule out either of the two types that haven't got the dominant R gene, because their flowers will be *Yellow*.
However, we can't say the same if we're missing the dominant Y, because that flower is RryyWwss.  This is a Red rose too (let's call it *Red-W*), but because it lacks the dominant Y gene, it's no good for making blue offspring without further intervention.

What this means is that even if you do get a Red rose from breeding an *Orange *and a Purple together, there is only a 50-50 chance that your rose is a *Red-Y*; you might instead get the alternative *Red-W* which isn't even capable of producing blue babies.


So what's the fix?  I have three suggestions to help reduce the risk of wasting a long time on Red-W roses, all of which might be useful, particularly if done together!

1) Test the hybrid red roses before you start them breeding.  Our worry is that we might be introducing a rose into the pool that doesn't have the Y dominant gene, so we'd like some sort of way to test our roses and find out whether they have that gene or not.

You can do such a test by breeding our hybrid red rose with a *Black *rose! If we breed a black rose (genotype RRyyWWss) with:

a Red-Y, then there are three possible colours the children might have - Red, Black and *Orange*.
a Red-W, then there are only two possible colours the children might have - Red and Black
So if we start by breeding the hybrid red with a black rose, and it has an orange child, then you know it's a Red-Y and is suitable for making Blues with others of its genotype.

2) When we've separated them out, we can use Red-Ws to breed Red-Ys - just cross them with *seed Yellows*!  All Reds that we get from this will be Red-Ys (though not every child will be red)

Once you know this, though, there's an obvious point to ask which is "Why not just breed Red-Ws in the first place and use these to breed Red-Ys?" And in fact this is easy to do - you can breed a Purple and a Black rose to get a guaranteed Red-W.  You can also just breed seed White roses with seed Reds for a one-in-two chance to get either Red-Ws or *Pink roses*.

3) If you do want to follow the above method though, you can also fix the odds of getting a Red-Y a bit in your favour by allowing your *Orange roses* to breed together, and using a *"Second Generation" Orange rose* when pairing with the Purple rose.

Our basic *Orange roses* have quite an unstable genotype - they have recessive r and y genes, as well as their dominant R and Y counterparts. The reason we sometimes get Red-W plants is that we can lose the dominant Y when crossing. If we can breed an *Orange Rose* that has *both* dominant YY genes then we'd never get Red-W children.

All *Orange roses* we get from crossing parents created using the above methods do have at least one dominant R and Y (if the child has both recessive yy then it is either black, red or white, and recessive rr is white or yellow).  What this means is we can't do worse by using an *orange* variety found from crossing other *orange roses*.  Not every child of two *orange* parent roses is itself* orange*, but those that are have a one-in-three chance of having both dominant YY genes; that's no guarantee, but it does reduce the odds of leading us down a genetic dead end.

(*Oranges* found during testing other Red-Ys can help too - they're never going to be dominant YY, but they might be dominant RR which reduces the possibility of *Yellows*.)



I don't know if this makes any difference to anyone, but it seems worth highlighting an additional step or two that people might want to take in pursuit of the mythical *Blue Roses*!


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## LobsterCopter

MerriWalker said:


> 2) When we've separated them out, we can use Red-Ws to breed Red-Ys - just cross them with *seed Yellows*!  All Reds that we get from this will be Red-Ys (though not every child will be red)



I'm pretty sure that this is not actually true. Not sure where you are getting your info but based on the wiki, seed yellow flowers are genetically encoded as 0100 (i.e. rrYywwbb), while Red-W is 1010 (RryyWwbb) and Red-Y is 1110 (RrYyWwbb). So if you cross seed yellow with Red-W, your possible offspring are and combo of 0's and 1's within the first three genes. In other words, you haven't moved the needle: good reds and bad reds are both produced and indistinguishable from one another.

Th alternate plan to test any hybrid reds against blank roses is KIND of good, but the issue is that Red-W roses have no tell--you will always eventually know if you have a Red-Y, but you can never be 100% confident that you do NOT have one. And with orange having a 1/4 probability in the positive situation, you can expect to wait quite a while to see one for a specific test patch (my guess is an average of 1-2 weeks).

I have yet to see a really good strategy for sussing out those elusive blues.


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## MerriWalker

LobsterCopter said:


> So if you cross seed yellow with Red-W, your possible offspring are and combo of 0's and 1's within the first three genes. In other words, you haven't moved the needle: good reds and bad reds are both produced and indistinguishable from one another.


Thanks for the clarifying point!  So from the OP's spreadsheet, seed yellows are genetically rrYYWWss.  This is why a Black rose (RRyyWWss) combined with a seed yellow rose has a 100% chance of getting an Orange rose (RrYyWWss) - both black and seed yellow roses have what's called a Stable genotype, in that you can predict with certainty what each half of the pair is going to contribute to any crossing.

There is still a non-determinism here from the Red-W (RryyWwss) side of the pairing, in that Red-W cross with Yellow seed may or may not have a dominant R, and may or may not have two dominant W, but they will definitely have one dominant Y and all recessive s.  So our 4 possibilities are:

rrYyWwss (White)
rrYyWWss (Yellow)
RrYyWwss (Red-Y)
RrYyWWss (Orange)

So, there's only a 1-in-4 chance that we get a Red flower out of this.  However, if we do, then it's definitely a Red-Y.

Does that make sense?


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## LobsterCopter

MerriWalker said:


> Thanks for the clarifying point!  So from the OP's spreadsheet, seed yellows are genetically rrYYWWss.  This is why a Black rose (RRyyWWss) combined with a seed yellow rose has a 100% chance of getting an Orange rose (RrYyWWss) - both black and seed yellow roses have what's called a Stable genotype, in that you can predict with certainty what each half of the pair is going to contribute to any crossing.



So then, we have a more serious issue. The OP's spreadsheet claims that seed yellows contain only pure gene pairs, while the wiki claims that seed yellows have a mixed yellow gene pair (Yy). This distinction drastically influences the strategy, and I have no way of determining who is accurate.


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## WolfyWolf

Used DazzaBound's video for successful blue roses. That's my only added input lol.
I watched two other videos, but his was the only one that specified a whole "testing" conundrum I had.


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