Bonsai Trees Wiki

Bonsai Trees (mod id bonsaitrees3) grows complete miniature trees inside a single pot block. Give a Bonsai Pot a compatible soil and a sapling and the tree grows shrunken inside the pot - a living, fully modeled little tree in one block of space.

What the mod is used for:

• Decoration - grown bonsais are genuine scale models of their trees and look great in gardens, interiors and shelves.
• Compact tree farms - with cutting tools installed, a pot harvests its tree automatically and the drops collect in the pot's output slots, extractable with hoppers.
• Growing the unusual - beyond ordinary trees, pots can grow corals, chorus plants, mushrooms, and crimson and warped fungus.

The original mod is by Davenonymous (github.com/davenonymous/bonsaitrees), released under the MIT license. The required Libnonymous library is bundled, so nothing else needs to be installed.

1. Craft a Bonsai Pot and place it anywhere - it does not need light, water or space above it.
2. Right-click the pot with a soil - plain dirt works fine to start (see Soils for the full list and their speed differences).
3. Right-click the pot with a sapling (or another compatible plant - see Saplings & Plants). The miniature tree starts growing immediately.
4. Watch it grow. The model enlarges through its growth stages until the tree is fully grown.
5. Harvest. Break the grown tree by hand to pop out its drops, or open the pot and install a cutting tool (an axe) in an upgrade slot to have the pot chop the tree automatically every time it finishes growing.

Right-clicking with an empty hand retrieves the sapling or soil again; breaking the pot drops everything it holds.

Right-click the pot (with nothing plantable in hand) to open its screen. The layout:

Drops sitting in the output slots can be pulled out by a hopper placed under the pot, so a pot with a cutting tool and a hopper is a complete self-running tree farm in two blocks.

The pot accepts 24 vanilla soils, and each soil has its own growth tick modifier - some soils grow trees noticeably faster or slower than others, and not every plant accepts every soil (fungi want their nether soils, corals want water, and so on). The vanilla soil set:

• Overworld earth: dirt, grass block, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, podzol, mud, moss block, mycelium
• Sands: sand, red sand
• Nether: netherrack, soul sand, soul soil, crimson nylium, warped nylium, nether wart block, basalt (the basalt family)
• End: end stone
• Others: snow block
• Bucket soils: a water bucket (for corals) and a lava bucket are valid pot fillings too

Swap the soil at any time by taking it back with an empty-hand right-click and inserting a different one.

19 vanilla sapling recipes are supported - every vanilla tree plus a set of unusual growables:

• Trees: oak, spruce, birch, jungle, acacia, dark oak, mangrove (propagule), cherry, azalea
• Nether: crimson fungus, warped fungus
• Mushrooms: brown mushroom, red mushroom
• End: chorus plant
• Corals: coral varieties grown on a water-filled pot

Each entry defines its drops - logs, saplings, sticks and the tree's specialties (apples from oaks, cocoa from jungle trees, chorus fruit, coral blocks and so on). Use /bonsai list sapling in-game for the complete machine-readable list.

The four upgrade slots change what the pot does when a tree finishes growing:

• Cutting tools (axes) - REQUIRED for automatic harvesting. With a cutting tool installed, the pot chops the grown tree by itself and drops go to the output slots. Without one, the pot just holds the grown tree until you break it manually.
• Silk-touch tools - a cutting tool enchanted with Silk Touch harvests blocks intact where the tree supports it.
• Fortune-style boosts - fortune-enchanted tools increase drop amounts, exactly as they would on real blocks.
• Hoppers - hopper upgrades add item-transfer behavior; a plain hopper block under the pot also extracts the output slots.
• Bee hives - bee hive upgrades add their products to the harvest.

Tools in the upgrade slots take durability as they chop, so unbreakable or well-enchanted tools last accordingly.

Bonsai Trees needs no commands for normal play. It ships one small utility command with three list modes:

• /bonsai list sapling - prints every compatible sapling/plant recipe to the chat
• /bonsai list soil - prints every accepted soil and its growth modifier
• /bonsai list drops - prints the drop tables of the sapling recipes

These are informational only - nothing about a world is changed.

Does the pot need light, water or room to grow? No. The pot is self-contained: any location works, and the tree occupies only the pot's own block.

Why isn't my tree being harvested automatically? Automatic harvest requires a cutting tool (an axe) in one of the four upgrade slots. Without one the grown tree simply waits for you to break it by hand.

How do I get the drops out automatically? Place a hopper under the pot - it extracts the six output slots continuously.

Do soils matter? Yes - every soil carries its own growth tick modifier, so soil choice changes growth speed, and some plants only accept certain soils (fungi grow on nylium and other nether soils, corals need a water-filled pot).

Can I grow things that aren't trees? Yes: corals, chorus plants, brown and red mushrooms, and crimson and warped fungus all have pot recipes.

Do upgrade tools break? Tools in the upgrade slots consume durability with each automatic chop; enchantments (Silk Touch, fortune-style boosts) apply to the harvest.

Does the mod need other mods installed? No - the Libnonymous library it uses is bundled inside the download.

Are there config files or commands I must set up? No setup is needed. The only command is the informational /bonsai list sapling|soil|drops utility.