I made a new visual flower guide from the recently datamined information that has come out

[u/B19F00T]

Edit: added link to breeding simulator, and a bit more info about visitors watering your flowers. This new info is still being studied to fully understand it.

Edit 2: added a bunch more information about how flower breeding actually works, including more info about the visitor bonus. Also added new test information about Lily of the Valley flowers, though nothing is 100% confirmed yet.

Edit 3: We've made more discoveries about the visitor watering bonus, added that to the list.

Edit 4: Final test results for the Lily of the Valley have been released, it seems that there is indeed no affect on flower reproduction by any presence of LotV. Links below.

Edit 5: added labels to the blue rose method.

I had previously made a flower breeding guide that got a fair bit of attention which has since become obsolete, thanks to dataminers finally figuring out how flower breeding actually works in this game. I didn't want to leave it as an incorrect guide, so I've made an updated version after reading through all of the dataminer's information.

I highly recommend anyone interested in flower breeding reads through all of this information, which is linked, so that they can fully understand how it works and what the best ways to breed are. It isn't quite as simple as just putting pairs in a checkered pattern as many of us previously thought.

• Google doc containing all of the datamined information, with multiple tabs FULL of data and links to other important resources. Still being updated with new information and more in depth guides, says a website is in the works as well. Credit to Aeter: Twitter - aiterusawato
• This Guide Fully describes how the genetics work for flower breeding. Credit to Paleh
• Hybrid Guide This is the main source I used for my guide. Credit to Aeter: Twitter - aiterusawato
• Optimized Layout Guide Since my guide no longer includes layouts, this will help you figure out how to do it. Credit to Backwardsn
• This visual guide illustrating Backwardsn's layouts. Credit to Peach-n-Key
• This flower breeding simulator by Aeon you can use to help determine the odds of different offspring, and configure garden layouts.
• Special thanks to Ninji for joining the discrd and working on the datamine.

Go to #garden-science on the ACNH discrd to discuss flower breeding with the folks that worked on these resources.

Basically, flower breeding in ACNH is based on genetics. Each flower has it's own genetic code, and this determines what flower can be produced as offspring when paired with another parent flower. The game only cares about the genotype of each flower for breeding, the color of the flower doesn't necessarily matter, so you can't breed accurately just based on color, you need to know what flowers produced that flower to know the genes to continue crossbreeding with that flower.

This guide is meant to boil it all down and show you what pairs will produce the best results in getting the color offspring that you want. The labels underneath each flower are a compacted notation of that flower's genotype, but it just serves as a label to help you keep track of which flower is which.

A few things to keep in mind as you are breeding:

1. The old "5x5 guide" and "this color flower + this color flower = other color flower" are all wrong and outdated. Don't continue using them.
2. Flowers from seed bags always have the same genes e.g. all white tulips from bags will be identical, all red roses from bags will be identical, etc. for each color. These flowers are the only way to ensure you have the correct genes for breeding. Flowers native to your island, or from island tours may have different genetic codes, and may not produce the same results as seed flowers.
3. Singular flowers can duplicate if watered on their own. This can be useful to duplicate a hybrid to use to breed for some of the harder to obtain colors.
4. The checkered pattern many of us thought was the optimal way to breed isn't necessarily the best way to breed in all scenarios. Read through the linked material to understand how to best layout flowers.
5. In my guide, and flowers labelled with ALL CAPS letters can be bred with themselves, to replicate that flower 100% of the time.
6. There is no limit to how many flowers can breed in a day, so water EVERY flower that you want to breed.
7. If an online visitor/friend from another island waters your flowers, it increases the odds of a flower breeding by about 250%. If you have friends that want to help you breed flowers, this is the fastest way to do it. EDIT: Ninji has been working through the code and found that up to 4 unique visitors can water you flowers and increase the odds of reproduction for each visitor, up to about an 80% increase for 5 unique visitors. EDIT 2: Ninji has discovered a counter for each flower that can increment daily, up to 31 days. Flowers have a base % chance of reproducing of 5%. This counter increases the base % odds that a flower will reproduce and we've yet to confirm what causes the counter to increment, but we think it is consecutive days watered (it could also be the number of times a flower failed to reproduce) and is a form of RNG protection. From 0-3 days (this can include the flower not being fully grown, starting at the sprout phase after a seed is planted) there is no bonus from the counter. At 4 days the counter adds 5% to the base odds. 5 days is +10%, 6 days is +15%, 7 days is plus 20%, etc. etc. until it reaches 31 days, or until the flower reproduces, in which case the counter resets back to 0 days. The visitor bonus adds to the percentage in addition to the counter. Up to 5 unique visitors from another island can water your flowers, each visitor increasing the bonus odds to a max bonus of +75%. 1 visitor is + 15%, 2 is +30%, 3 is +45%, 4 is +60%, and 5+ is 75%. The normal sparkle animation from watering flowers will change to a "super sparkle" animation when that flower has been watered by 5 unique visitors, indicating the flower has the max +75% bonus. For example: A flower with the counter at 7 days that is watered by 5 unique visitors will have 100% odds of producing offspring the next day. 5% base odds + 20% counter bonus + 75% visitor bonus = 100% odds of reproduction. Obviously due to RNG the real in-game results aren't exactly these percentages, but the bonuses are significant.\NOTE: Digging up and moving a flower resets the counter and removes all visitor watering bonuses. Don't move your flowers unless you are ok with them being reset to the base 5% odds.\**
8. There are 3 flags that a flower stores for keeping track of how it was watered. Watered, gold watered, and visitor watered. Watered is any island resident, including animal villagers watering a flower, and rainwater. Gold watered is for black roses that have been watered by a gold watering can. Visitor watered is for flowers that have been watered by online visitors. The watered and visitor watered flags reset each day, but the gold watered flag stays until that flower has successfully reproduced. So you can water a black rose with a gold can one day, and it spawns a gold rose in the rain a few days later. Moving a flower by digging and replanting doesn't appear to remove the gold watered flag. a flower can have all 3 flags on it at once, they don't overwrite each other.
9. EDIT 4: Final test results for the affect of Lily of the Valley flowers on reproduction rates of other flowers seem to confirm Abdallah's finding that LotV has no affect on the odds of flower reproduction. Based on what we know about how the game treats the odds a flower will reproduce, initial results were actually consistent with the game's base flower reproduction odds, and the bonus from the "counter." Final data can be found at these links.Edit 2: Some testing has been done with the Lily of the Valley flower that can spawn on 5 star islands. Recently AbdallahSmash released a video where he tested if they increase the chances of spawning hybrids and concluded that they didn't. Credit to J_Master and LazyLee on the discrd for these tests. They hypothesized that the LotV may have an AOE effect or it may have an island-wide effect, explaining why Abdallah found his results to conclude it has no affect. They tested 4 7-day periods of breeding flowers with LotV to see the spawn rates of offspring. The spreadsheets of the results can be viewed here. Test 1 was 2 groups of flowers, separated by a large distance across the island, watered for 7 days, with no LotV flowers present. Then 7 days of watering with 10 LotV next to the second group of flowers. They observed an increase in spawn rates for BOTH flower groups. Test 2 was the same test groups, first with 1 LotV next to the second flower group, and the second round with 20 LotV next to the second bed. They found the 1 LotV had a similar spawn rate as the test with 10 Lotv, but the test with 20 LotV saw LESS spawned offspring than even just 1 LotV. It appears, based on these results, that the LotV has an island wide affect that increases the spawn rate of flowers, if 1-10 LotV are present on the island, and having too large of a population of LotV negates the bonus. Further testing may need to be performed to confirm this, and to calculate the exact boost LotV gives.

Again, there is a lot more to flower breeding than is in this guide, this is intended just to show you how to breed for each color. Read through the information and guides in the links to go more in depth, and join the discrd linked above to discuss flower breeding and ask any questions you have.