Java Edition:Plant on Invalid Soil

Floating Plants.png

Plants are normally required to be on top of a valid soil block. For example, saplings and flowers must be on a dirt, grass block, or other dirt-like block, cacti must be on sand, nether warts must be on soul sand, etc. There have been many methods that allow plants to be obtained on other blocks that they are not intended to go on top of.

Obtaining

Placement

From pre-Classic rd-161348 to Indev 0.31 20100206-1437, the player could place plants and fungi without any restrictions. At the time this included saplings (added in pre-Classic rd-161348) and roses, dandelions, red mushrooms, and brown mushrooms (added in Classic 0.0.20a). The player can place these plants and fungi on top of any block, including air. The player can also mine the soil block under plants or fungi without them updating. However, the plants and fungi will randomly tick themselves during these versions and decay if not on dirt or a grass block. These blocks will save if the player closes the game before they decay and they can be updated to later versions where this method no longer works. All the plants and fungi will continue to random tick in Indev but an Indev to Infdev converter can be used to update them into later versions.

Block Replacement Bypass

Main page: Block Replacement Bypass

From Alpha v1.0.5-1 to Beta 1.4_01, block replacement bypass can be used to make any plant that existed at the time floating.

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  Water that was just placed for block replacement bypass
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  The water replaced with a brown mushroom, leaving it floating
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  The water replaced with a cactus, leaving it floating and next to a solid block
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  The water replaced with a dandelion, leaving it floating
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  The water replaced with a rose, leaving it floating
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  The water replaced with a red mushroom, leaving it floating
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  The water replaced with a sapling, leaving it floating
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  The water replaced with a sugar cane, leaving it floating

Full Block Cactus

From Alpha v1.0.6 to Alpha v1.0.10, cacti were a full block that could be placed without restriction like a normal block. This allows the cactus to be placed on any block and be placed next to any block.

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  Full block cacti in Alpha v1.0.6 on air and leaves

Skull Replacement

Main page: Skull Replacement

From 1.7.6-pre2 to 1.7.10, skull replacement can be used to replace the soil underneath any plant with any skull block.

Lake Generation

Since at least Beta 1.6 Test Build 3 (possibly earlier)^[test], lakes could generate under grass, flowers, ferns, bamboo, and other plants without destroying them. This allows these plants to be on water, lava, or be floating above the lake. The plants will also remain on the blocks put at the shore of the lake: sand, gravel, stone, diorite, granite, or andesite. This was a very common generation bug until it was made much rarer in 21w20a (1.17 snapshot) with the first attempted fix. Floating grass on lava lakes and plants on sand and gravel was fully removed in 1.17 Pre-release 1, the next version. Floating grass on water lakes was fully removed in 21w40a, finally fixing this method.

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  Floating grass on a water lake
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  Grass on the sand of a lake's shore
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  Grass on sand in the first version this bug existed in, Beta 1.8 Pre-release-1
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  Grass on water in 1.17 Pre-release 3, after the fix that made it much rarer
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  Grass on a lava lake's shore that normally is stone but got replaced with granite
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  Bamboo floating and on stone above a lava lake

Structure Generation

During generation, structures can remove or replace the soil block underneath many plants while leaving the plant in place. This has been possible since at least 18w49a^[test] and remains possible up to 25w21a (present). Examples of this bug happen on the paths of villages, on the floor of village houses, on the floor of pillager outposts, on the surface of a trail ruins, on top of a mineshaft, and on the netherrack and magma blocks in a ruined portal.

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  Grass in a villager house
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  Grass floating above a mineshaft
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  An oxeye daisy and grass on a village path
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  Grass and a dandelion on a ruined portal's netherrack and magma block

Big Dripleaf on Any Block

From big dripleaf's introduction in 21w05a to 21w42a, big dripleaf could be placed on any block. In 21w43a, big dripleaves were restricted to being placed on only clay, coarse dirt, dirt, farmland, grass blocks, moss blocks, mycelium, podzol, and rooted dirt.

Big Dripleaf on Pale Moss Block

Big dripleaf and a big dripleaf stem on top of pale moss blocks.

From 24w40a to 1.21.4, big dripleafs can be placed on pale moss blocks. Starting in 25w02a, big dripleafs can no longer be placed on pale moss blocks.

Update Suppression

Main page: Update Suppression

Update suppression is a powerful method that allows almost any multi-block discontinued feature to be created by suppressing block updates. This can be used to make any plant floating.

23w13a_or_b Vote Rule

Warning: April Fools' 

This feature requires the use of April Fools' versions and may require the use of file modifications to load. See the April Fools' tutorial page for information on loading these versions.

In April Fools' snapshot 23w13a_or_b, it was possible to vote for the less_interaction_updates vote rule, which will stop most block updates from happening, including the block update that usually happens when you break the support block underneath a plant. This even allows you to place an invalid block underneath the plant, creating a plant with an invalid support block.

1. Till grass or dirt with a shovel to create farmland, or place down farmland as an item.
2. Place the pitcher pod onto the farmland.
3. If you want your floating pitcher crop to be fully grown, wait for it to grow. Otherwise, continued on.
4. Vote for the less_interactions_updates vote rule.
5. Break the support block below the plant.
6. (Optional) - Place any block underneath the plant, creating a plant with an invalid support block.

Unlike other methods, this is intentional, as these vote rules were purposefully implemented by Mojang as the joke for this April Fools' snapshot.

See Also

• Floating Button
• Floating Gravity Block
• Floating Lever
• Floating Nether Sprout
• Floating Pitcher Crop
• Floating Pointed Dripstone
• Floating Rail
• Floating Redstone