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The Spring to Life update (1.21.5) for Minecraft has introduced several new elements to your blocky world, including the pretty pink Cactus flower. This new addition joins other recent floral additions like Wildflowers, giving players more options to decorate their builds and landscapes. Let’s look at where to find cactus in Minecraft, how to grow them, and what you can do with them.

Where to Find Cactus Flowers

Cactus flowers grow on top of cacti in specific biomes. You’ll need to visit one of these four biome types to find them:

  • Desert
  • Badlands
  • Eroded Badlands
  • Wooded Badlands

When exploring these biomes, look for naturally generated cacti. According to the game mechanics, naturally spawned cacti have a 25% chance of generating with a Cactus flower on top.

How to Grow Cactus Flowers

If you want to grow Cactus flowers yourself rather than just finding them in the wild, you’ll need to understand the growth mechanics:

  • For cacti that are one or two blocks tall, there’s a 10% chance a flower will grow instead of the cactus getting taller
  • For three-block-tall cacti (the maximum height), there’s a 25% chance a flower will grow

Important growth conditions to know:

  • The flower will only grow if there are no blocks in any cardinal direction adjacent to it
  • Once a Cactus flower grows on top of a cactus, the cactus will stop growing taller

Harvesting these flowers is straightforward—they break instantly when mined by hand or with any tool, just like other flowers in the game. The flower will always drop itself when broken.

You can also obtain Cactus flowers when the cactus block they’re growing on breaks. This means you could potentially create an automated Cactus flower farm using pistons, observers, and some building blocks, though the low spawn rate might make this less efficient than other farms.

Uses for Cactus Flowers

These desert blooms aren’t just pretty to look at—they have several practical uses in the game:

  • Crafting Pink Dye: Like most flowers in Minecraft, you can use Cactus flowers to create dye. Place a Cactus flower on a crafting table, and you’ll get pink dye, which can be used to color wool, terracotta, glass, and other dyeable items.
  • Bee Attraction: Bees are attracted to Cactus flowers and will follow players holding them within 6 blocks. You can use these flowers to lead bees back to your base and breed them.
  • Composting: You can throw Cactus flowers into a composter with a 30% chance of raising the compost level by 1.
  • Decoration: Of course, decoration is one of the main uses for any Minecraft flower. However, unlike other flowers, Cactus flowers cannot be placed in flower pots, so keep that in mind when planning your decorative schemes.

The addition of Cactus flowers brings some much-needed color to the otherwise bland desert and badlands biomes of Minecraft. Whether you’re looking to add a splash of pink to your builds, need a new source of dye, or want to expand your bee farm, these desert blooms are worth seeking out in the Spring to Life update.

Minecraft