As you wander while planting flowers, you may contribute to the growth cycle of a big flower. This is useful because, when big flowers bloom, there will be new items for your Pikmin to collect through expeditions. Below you’ll learn how to get petals and plant flowers, so you can start bringing some colour to the landscape of Pikmin Bloom. On this page: Now go for a walk. As you do, you’ll plant flowers behind you until you either run out of petals, or tap the Stop button. The next section will go into the benefits of flower planting - but before then, let’s discuss a couple of modifiers which can change how planting works. One is your squad size - which will increase with your level - and be changed by pressing the map on the top of the main menu, then selecting Pikmin. The more Pikmin in your squad, the more flowers you will plant. The other is it is possible to change petal types to plant different colour flowers. This is largely cosmetic, but can be used to help influence what Big Flowers can become (more on this in a later section). This is also where you see how many flowers you can plant with the remaining petals you have left. It should be noted that flowers planted and steps made are technically different statistics; you can accumulate steps without planting flowers. This is useful as all Pikmin Bloom level requirements demand you walk a certain distance, but only some specify also planting flowers. Planting flowers has a number of benefits, however - so it’s worth having having this active, especially if you want to hatch Seedlings…
While planting flowers, Seedlings in your possession will grow faster by at least 10%. The longer you are planting flowers in a session, the higher the multiplier they will receive. For every 500 flowers you plant, you will earn a Coin. Planting flowers near Big Flowers will help them grow and bloom, with the colour petal planting influencing what they can become. (More on this in a later section).
An additional benefit, of course, is cosmetic - and that’s seeing flowers out in the world. This is where different colours also come into play, and we recommending choosing walking routes based on which you think could do with sprucing up. Note that as well as your down, flowers planted from other players can also show on your map too - this is a multiplayer game after all! You can feed nectar to Pikmin on the ‘whistle’ screen until a flower blooms on their head, then picking the petals to add them to your inventory. Different colour nectar means different colour petals, and in turn, flowers - so it’s worth rotating through your nectar collection to get a good spread of colours. If you run out of petals, then you can go Expeditions which can help you gather more nectar, or visit the in-shop and buy Petals, ranging between 50 to 200 Coins depending on the colour. Big flowers are grown by planting flowers about their base. Each one has its own radius, which is represented by a circle on the walking view, and you can see how many flowers are left to plant by selecting the big flower. It takes 300 flowers to grow a big flower through each stage, which means a total of 600 flowers must be planted within its radius for the big flower to bloom. It’s also important to note that the big flower’s growth cycle will reset after 23 hours according to JasTx_Jasmineteax on reddit. Thankfully this is a community effort, with any player who walks within the radius while planting flowers contributing to the big flower’s growth, so don’t feel like you’ve got to do it alone. When a big flower is blooming a selection of rare items, such as special glowing fruit, will appear about its base, which can be collected by sending your Pikmin on an Expedition. The items you retrieve from blooming big flowers will be marked with a flower icon on the Expedition tab to help you decide which ones are worth gathering. Big flowers can also bloom into a variety of flower types, with the exact type being partly determined by the flower planted about its base. If the big flower is mostly surrounded by blue flowers, for example, then it will likely grow into a type of blue flower. The exception to this is the white flower which can cause the other types of big flowers to bloom, so that players can easily collect different types of nectar. Finally, your choice in flower may cause the big flower to bloom into a rare variant, including roses and pansies. Pikmin Bloom has arrived! If you’ve just started travelling with Pikmin, check out our level rewards list and learn how to plant flowers. Once your Pikmin horde has grown, try sending them out on expeditions, interacting with big flowers and collecting coins.
There is around a five minute cooldown on planting flowers again in the same spot you have visited previously. This means you should be circling around a different route on walk, or going back and forth adjacent where you have just walked, to maximise your planting. Flowers planted will disappear in five days. When feeding Nectar to Pikmin, anything that isn’t the default white colour Nectar will make them bloom instantly. However, if you get the Pikmin to the ‘bud’ stage first by walking, then you can spend less Nectar to make them Bloom - and thus, get coloured Petals for less too.
Walking through flowers already planted - by yourself or other players - doesn’t give you any bonuses. As with steps, you can close your app once you have started planting flowers and they will be counted. (If you are familiar with Niantic’s other games, this means that ‘Adventure Sync’ is available from day one.) While the number of Pikmin in your squad will increase your flower blooming rate, whether they are in bud of flower form, or have a higher friendship of your Pikmin, doesn’t appear to have an effect on how flowers are planted.
If you’d like to learn more about Pikmin Bloom, check out our pages on Expeditions, coins and the level rewards list!
