Key Takeaway
Torchflower Seeds in Minecraft can be fed to Parrots to tame them. Furthermore, you can feed Torchflower Seeds to Snifflets (baby Sniffers) and baby Chickens to increase their growth rate and heal them. What’s more, you can breed (and heal) Sniffers by feeding them Torchflower Seeds.
While it would be logical to assume a Torchflower has a lighting-related use in Minecraft, such assumptions would be incorrect! Moreover, the flowers themselves don’t serve a purpose besides being beautiful decorations—only the seeds have a function: to feed, breed, and tame a few select species.
Table Of Contents
The Uses of Torchflower Seeds in Minecraft
As mentioned above, Torchflowers in Minecraft are only (currently) useful for decoration. Conversely, Torchflower Seeds have multiple functions—besides getting planted to grow Torchflowers.
Firstly, you can feed a Parrot Torchflower Seeds to tame them. Previously, you could only tame Parrots with more common seeds, such as Pumpkin Seeds, Melon Seeds, Beetroot Seeds, and Wheat Seeds. Good to know that Parrots aren’t picky!
Next, Torchflower Seeds can be fed to a pair of Sniffers to make them breed. Afterward, one of the Sniffers will lay a Sniffer Egg. After one full day (20 minutes in real-time), the Sniffer Egg will hatch, releasing a Snifflet—a baby Sniffer. Sniffers and Torchflowers are linked closely; the only way to get Torchflower Seeds is to follow a Sniffer. In fact, the sole purpose of Sniffers in Minecraft is to dig up Torchflower Seeds and Pitcher Pods.
Speaking of Sniffers and Snifflets, you can feed Torchflower Seeds to Snifflets to make them grow up more quickly. However, you’ll need a lot of Torchflower Seeds to accelerate the growth of a Snifflet. In our tests, it took 30-40 Torchflower Seeds to get a newly hatched Snifflet to grow into a Sniffer.
On top of that, you can feed Torchflower Seeds to a baby Chicken to help it grow—just like with a Snifflet. Similar to Parrots, you can feed baby Chickens any type of seed, so you shouldn’t use your rare Torchflower Seeds as Chicken feed.
Lastly, you can toss Torchflower Seeds into a Composter for a 30% chance to raise the Composter level by one increment.
TipHow to Get Torchflower Seeds
As of writing this, the only way to get Torchflower Seeds is to collect some as a Sniffer digs them up. This is unusual for most plants in Minecraft. Therefore, you’ll have to treat Torchflowers differently if you want more of them.
With that said, you can retrieve planted Torchflower Seeds by breaking Torchflower plants in the first two stages of their growth. When a third stage (fully grown) Torchflower is broken, it will only drop itself and no seeds. As such, you can’t get more Torchflower Seeds by farming Torchflowers as a crop.
How to Farm Torchflowers
If you like the look of Torchflowers, you can farm them fairly easily once you acquire enough Torchflower Seeds. Despite Torchflower Seeds being tricky to initially gather, growing them is straightforward since they act much like most other plants.
You’ll first need to use a Hoe to till some Dirt to turn it into Farmland. Make sure to do so near some water, otherwise, the Farmland will revert to basic Dirt blocks. Once you’ve got a plot setup, use Torchflower Seeds on Farmland to plant them. Afterward, all you need to do is make sure that the seedlings are getting sunlight and they’ll grow.
Torchflowers have three stages of growth. The first is a little green bud that appears as soon as you plant a Torchflower Seed. The second stage is a small yellow flower. Finally, the third stage is the fully-grown Torchflower radiating aesthetic warmth with its yellow, orange, and red petals.
As with most plants in Minecraft, you can accelerate the growth of a Torchflower by using Bone Meal on it. Each piece of Bone Meal used on a Torchflower makes it reach the next growth stage. Without Bone Meal, it takes roughly five to ten minutes for a Torchflower to advance to its next growth stage.
Origins of the Minecraft Torchflower
True to Minecraft’s usual method of taking inspiration from real plants and animals for its in-game flora and fauna, the Torchflower is based on the Etlingera elatior flower.
This plant also goes by the common name of “torchflower” as well as the following:
- “torch ginger”
- “ginger flower”
- “red ginger lily”
- “torch lily”
- “wild ginger”
- “Philippine wax flower”
- “Indonesian tall ginger”
- “porcelain rose”
Etlingera elatior gets such names from its vibrant red petals. It grows in North Sumatra, which is located in the northwest section of Indonesia.
For the most part, Etlingera elatior is used in cooking. It’s primarily an ingredient in fish stews and various sauces. One day, we hope its Minecraft counterpart gets added to some food recipes in-game. There are already a few soups and stews in Minecraft, so giving the Torchflower a use as an ingredient would add a lot of flavor to its appearance in the blocky title—pun very much intended.
The Torchflower and Pitcher Plant make nice floral additions to Minecraft wildlife. We wish there was a bit more to them; however, there’s always the chance that they’ll gain more functions in future updates. For example, Smithing Tables used to be completely useless but then gained uses such as becoming a Job Block for Toolsmith Villagers. Only time will tell…
