In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, every day is Arbor Day. Trees are vital to the economy and life of your island, so it’s important to get to know their inner workings. How do they work? What’s the difference between hardwood, softwood, and wood? How do you cut these suckers down? This guide will have all of that information and more, so read on to learn more about these big, hard, fruit bearing weeds.
How To Grow Trees In Animal Crossing
There are a couple of different kinds of trees in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and they can be broken up into three categories: Fruit Bearing, Decorative, and Special.
Fruit Bearing Trees
- Apple Trees
- Pear Trees
- Peach Trees
- Cherry Trees
- Orange Trees
- Palm (Coconut) Trees
Every island spawns with one type of fruit tree at the beginning. This is your native fruit. By going to other islands (via your friends or Nook Miles Tickets) you can acquire the remaining five types of fruit. To plant a fruit tree, you have two options. You can either bury an individual fruit or put down an entire transplanted tree. If you shake the fruit off of a tree and then plant that fruit, you’ll be rewarded with a brand new fruit bearing tree in three to four days. If you dig up a whole tree and plant it on your island, you’ll have the tree alongside whatever fruit was on it when you picked it up. Once you shake the tree and collect the fruit, the fruit will regrow in a few days.
Keep in mind that you need to eat a fruit to get the buff allowing you to dig up an entire tree with your shovel.
Coconuts and coconut trees can be collected by going to mystery islands by exchanging your Nook Miles for Nook Miles Tickets. Each mystery island will have a few coconut trees on the beach. Coconut trees can only be grown in sand. They also only produce two fruits instead of three.
Decorative Trees
There are two types of trees that exist for purely decorative purposes. They are cedar trees and uh, regular trees. The regular trees look like fruit trees but they don’t have fruit on them. You can buy saplings for each at Nook’s Cranny.
How To Get Bamboo Trees
There is one type of special “tree.” The bamboo plant can be found on mystery islands and can be harvested like other trees. You can transplant them and place them on your island, or you can harvest their fruit (which are called bamboo shoots) and replant those. Unlike other fruit bearing trees in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, bamboo plants produce their fruit underground. You can dig them up by looking for the telltale “X” that marks the spot in the area underneath the plant. When hit with an axe, bamboo plants create two resources: bamboo pieces and young spring bamboo. These resources can be used to craft items.
How To Get Hard Wood, Soft Wood & Wood
All normal trees (aka all trees except bamboo) produce three types of wood (hardwood, softwood, and regular old wood) when they are hit with an axe. The type of wood you get when you hit a tree is random, and each tree on an island will give you a maximum of three pieces of wood each day. To maximize your resource collection, we recommend carrying a couple of flimsy axes with you. Flimsy axes will never cut down a tree, but will allow you to collect all three pieces of wood while still keeping the tree standing. Using a normal, upgraded axe will result in you chopping down the tree after your third strike.
All three types of wood are valuable and needed in various DIY recipes.
How To Make Tree Stumps
Tree stumps are leftover when you do fully cut down a tree. They will not regrow into other trees. To remove them, use a shovel to dig up the stump. You can then fill in the hole. It is recommended to have a couple of stumps around your town though, because there are some bugs (like the citrus long-horned beetle) which will only spawn on tree stumps. They’re also really cute little chairs!
And that’s everything there is to know about trees! Hopefully this helps you get settled into your new Animal Crossing: New Horizons island! Much like the game itself, check back throughout the day to see what’s new here on Fanbyte. We already have guides for how to move your tent and how to get across rivers using either the Pole Vault or constructing bridges. Later today we’ll have more guides up including how to get Nook’s Cranny, how to visit mystery islands, and buy and sell turnips!
