BotanyTrees Mod Guide: Growing Trees in Botany Pots
BotanyTrees is an addon for Botany Pots that lets you grow trees inside compact pots instead of planting them in the world. Drop a Sapling into a Botany Pot with Dirt and watch it produce Logs, Sticks, Saplings, and even bonus drops automatically. With built-in support for over 45 mods and 334 tree recipes, it turns tree farming into an effortless, space-efficient operation.
Overview
BotanyTrees extends the Botany Pots mod by adding tree-growing recipes to the pot system. Rather than planting Saplings in the ground and waiting for them to grow into full trees (which also require clearing space around them), you simply place a Sapling into a Botany Pot and it will automatically cycle through growth stages, producing Logs and other drops when it finishes. The mod itself adds no new items or blocks. Instead, it registers 334 crop recipes that tell Botany Pots how to handle Saplings from vanilla Minecraft and over 45 other mods.
Every tree recipe in the mod uses the same core structure: a Sapling goes in as the seed, Dirt-category soil is required, and the pot produces a guaranteed set of Logs along with chance-based bonus drops like Sticks, Saplings, and special items. All vanilla trees share a growth time of 2,400 ticks (2 minutes at normal speed), and most modded trees use the same timing. You can browse the full list of supported trees and their exact drops in the Items and Recipes tabs on this page.
Prerequisites
BotanyTrees is an addon, not a standalone mod. You need Botany Pots installed and working before BotanyTrees does anything. Botany Pots provides the actual pot blocks (regular and Hopper variants in all Terracotta colors), the soil system, and the growth mechanic. BotanyTrees simply adds the data-driven recipes that tell those pots how to process Saplings. You will also need Bookshelf as a library dependency, which handles the conditional loading system that checks whether modded items exist before registering their recipes.
If you want to grow modded trees (for example, Biomes O' Plenty's Jacaranda or Twilight Forest's Canopy trees), you obviously need those mods installed as well. BotanyTrees uses Bookshelf's load conditions to automatically detect which mods are present and only registers recipes for Saplings that actually exist in your modpack.
BotanyTrees does not add any craftable items, blocks, or machines of its own. Everything you interact with comes from the Botany Pots mod. BotanyTrees only provides the recipe data that makes Saplings work as valid crops inside Botany Pots.
Getting Started
- 1
Craft a Botany Pot
Using Botany Pots, craft a regular Botany Pot from a Flower Pot and Terracotta. If you want automatic output collection, craft a Hopper Botany Pot by combining a Botany Pot with a Hopper. The Hopper variant will push harvested items into any inventory placed directly below it, which is essential for automated farms.
- 2
Add Soil to the Pot
Right-click the Botany Pot with a Dirt-category block. All tree recipes in BotanyTrees require the "dirt" soil category, so Dirt, Grass Block, Coarse Dirt, Rooted Dirt, Podzol, and Mycelium all work. Different soils can have different growth speed multipliers defined by Botany Pots, so check which soil gives the best speed in your modpack.
- 3
Plant a Sapling
Right-click the pot with any supported Sapling. You will see the Sapling appear in the pot and begin growing through visual stages. Vanilla trees like Oak, Birch, Spruce, Jungle, Acacia, and Dark Oak are all supported. The pot does not need sunlight, water, or open space above it.
- 4
Harvest or Automate
After 2,400 ticks (about 2 minutes), the tree will finish growing. With a regular Botany Pot, right-click to harvest the drops manually. With a Hopper Botany Pot placed on top of a Chest, drops are automatically deposited. The tree will immediately begin growing again after harvest, creating a continuous cycle.
- 5
Scale Up Your Farm
Since Botany Pots are single blocks, you can place as many as you want side by side. Line up a row of Hopper Botany Pots over a shared Chest or pipe network to create a high-throughput tree farm in a very compact space. Each pot operates independently, so there is no limit beyond available materials.
Vanilla Tree Drops
All eight vanilla tree types are supported with a growth time of 2,400 ticks. Every tree guarantees Log drops, and most have additional chance-based outputs. Oak and Jungle trees have the most interesting drop tables since they include bonus items beyond Logs and Sticks.
Oak Saplings produce 2-4 Oak Logs (100%), 1-2 Sticks (10%), Apples (5%), and Oak Saplings (15%). Jungle Saplings follow a similar pattern but drop Cocoa Beans (5%) instead of Apples. Birch, Spruce, Dark Oak, and Acacia all produce 2-4 of their respective Logs (100%), 1-2 Sticks (10%), and Saplings (15%). Azalea and Flowering Azalea are special cases: they produce only 1 Oak Log (100%) but also drop 1-3 of their respective Azalea bush back (100%), making them excellent for renewable Azalea farming.
Vanilla Tree Drop Rates
| Oak | Birch | Jungle | Azalea | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Growth Ticks | 2,400 | 2,400 | 2,400 | 2,400 |
| Logs | 2-4 (100%) | 2-4 (100%) | 2-4 (100%) | 1 Oak Log (100%) |
| Sticks | 1-2 (10%) | 1-2 (10%) | 1-2 (10%) | None |
| Sapling | 15% | 15% | 15% | 1-3 Azalea (100%) |
| Bonus Drop | Apple (5%) | None | Cocoa Beans (5%) | None |
Supported Mods
BotanyTrees ships with recipes for 46 different mods, totaling 334 tree recipes. The mod uses Bookshelf's conditional loading system, so recipes are only registered when the corresponding mod is installed. You do not need to configure anything; if a mod is present and its Saplings exist, BotanyTrees will automatically make them plantable in Botany Pots.
Biome and World Generation Mods
The largest category of supported mods includes world generation and biome mods. Biomes O' Plenty has 18 tree types including Jacaranda, Magic, Hellbark, Redwood, Palm, and several Cherry variants. Oh The Biomes You'll Go (BYG) is the most extensively supported with 46 trees, covering everything from Aspen and Baobab to Nightshade and Rainbow Eucalyptus. Regions Unexplored adds 28 trees including Sculkwood, Mauve, and several Maple variants. Other biome mods with support include Atmospheric, Autumnity, Biome Makeover, Blue Skies (8 trees), Ecologics, Environmental, Twilight Forest (9 trees), Undergarden, Upgrade Aquatic, and Wild Backport.
Farming and Food Mods
Food and farming mods have excellent support. Croptopia includes 27 fruit trees like Apple, Avocado, Banana, Coconut, Mango, and Walnut. These recipes are especially valuable because fruit trees drop their respective fruits alongside Logs. Pam's HarvestCraft 2 Trees has a massive library of fruit and nut tree Saplings. Terraqueous adds 11 fruit trees, and Simple Farming, Enhanced Farming, All You Can Eat, and Fruit Trees round out the farming mod support.
Magic and Technology Mods
Several magic and tech mods have tree support. Ars Nouveau has all four Archwood variants (Blazing, Cascading, Flourishing, Vexing). Malum supports Runewood and Soulwood trees, with Runewood having a chance to drop Exposed Runewood Logs (10%). Other supported mods include Forbidden Arcanus, Hexerei, Nature's Aura, Integrated Dynamics, EvilCraft, and Vampirism. On the tech side, Industrial Reborn, Tech Reborn, Thermal Series, Tinkers' Construct, Assembly Line Machines, and even All The Modium have tree support.
Other Supported Mods
Additional mods with tree support include Quark (6 Blossom tree variants), Architect's Palette (Twisted trees), Create: Dreams & Desires, Dynamic Trees, Moshiz Mod, Myr Trees, Ore Tree Reborn, Premium Wood, Silent Gear, Simply Tea, and Unique Crops.
Modded fruit trees from Croptopia, Pam's HarvestCraft, and Terraqueous drop their fruits alongside Logs, making them significantly more valuable per harvest cycle than standard wood trees. A row of Hopper Botany Pots with fruit tree Saplings is an efficient way to automate both wood and food production simultaneously.
How Drop Rates Work
Each tree recipe defines a list of drops, and every drop has a percentage chance of appearing on each harvest. Drops with 100% chance are guaranteed every cycle. When a drop triggers, it produces a random number of items between its minimum and maximum roll values. For example, Oak trees have a Log drop with minRolls of 2 and maxRolls of 4, meaning you get 2, 3, or 4 Oak Logs per harvest.
The drop patterns differ between vanilla and modded trees. Vanilla trees have relatively generous Sapling return rates at 15%, while most modded trees only have a 1% Sapling return chance. This is an important distinction: modded trees are much harder to sustain from Botany Pots alone. Modded trees tend to compensate with higher Stick drop rates (20% vs vanilla's 10%) and sometimes unique bonus drops specific to that tree type.
Most modded tree recipes have only a 1% chance to return a Sapling, compared to 15% for vanilla trees. This means your Sapling supply will not sustain itself from Botany Pots alone for modded trees. Always maintain a natural tree farm or Sapling reserve for any modded wood type you are farming in pots.
Automation and Farm Layouts
The real power of BotanyTrees comes from combining Hopper Botany Pots with inventory management. Place a Hopper Botany Pot on top of a Chest, load it with Dirt and a Sapling, and it will run indefinitely. Every 2 minutes it deposits Logs and any bonus drops into the Chest below. Since each pot is a single block, you can fit an enormous number of them into a small room.
For larger operations, connect the Chests to a pipe or item transport system from mods like Thermal Series, Mekanism, or Applied Energistics. This lets you funnel output from dozens of pots into a central storage system. If you are running a modpack with Botany Pots Tiers installed, you can also upgrade your pots to grow trees faster, dramatically increasing throughput.
A common layout is a row of Hopper Botany Pots sitting on top of a Hopper line feeding into a single Chest. This is cheap to build and easy to expand. For maximum density, you can stack two layers by placing regular Botany Pots on top of the Hopper pots (harvest the top layer manually or with redstone contraptions).
Notable Modded Tree Drops
While most trees simply drop their Log type, some modded trees have unique or especially useful bonus drops worth highlighting. Croptopia fruit trees drop their respective fruits (Cinnamon, Mango, Coconut, etc.) alongside Cinnamon Logs or standard Logs, making them a dual-purpose farming solution. Malum's Runewood tree has a 10% chance to drop Exposed Runewood Logs in addition to regular Runewood Logs, giving you both variants from a single pot.
Ars Nouveau Archwood trees (Blazing, Cascading, Flourishing, Vexing) are notable for their very low 1% Sapling return and no Stick drops, meaning you get only Archwood Logs from them. Twilight Forest trees like Canopy, Darkwood, and Time trees all work in pots, which is particularly useful since some of these woods are otherwise tedious to farm in the Twilight Forest dimension itself.
Recipe Counts by Mod Category
| Vanilla Minecraft | 8 trees |
| Biomes O' Plenty | 18 trees |
| Oh The Biomes You'll Go | 46 trees |
| Regions Unexplored | 28 trees |
| Croptopia | 27 trees |
| Pam's HarvestCraft 2 | 40+ trees |
| Twilight Forest | 9 trees |
| Blue Skies | 8 trees |
| Quark | 6 trees |
| Total Recipes | 334 |
Configuration
BotanyTrees itself has no configuration file since it is purely a data pack of crop recipes. However, you can modify any tree recipe by creating a data pack that overrides the default recipes. Each recipe is stored in the data/botanytrees/recipes/ namespace, organized by mod ID. To change a tree's growth time, drop rates, or drop quantities, create a matching JSON file in a data pack with your desired values.
Modpack makers frequently adjust these recipes to balance progression. Common tweaks include increasing growth times for powerful trees, reducing Log output to prevent trivializing wood collection, or boosting Sapling return rates for rare modded trees to make them more sustainable. The recipe format is straightforward: growthTicks controls the cycle time, and each entry in the drops array specifies an item, its chance (0.0 to 1.0), and optional minRolls/maxRolls for quantity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need Botany Pots installed for BotanyTrees to work?
Yes, BotanyTrees is an addon that requires Botany Pots as a dependency. BotanyTrees only provides the crop recipes that allow Saplings to be used in Botany Pots. Without Botany Pots, there are no pot blocks to plant in.
Why is my modded Sapling not working in a Botany Pot?
BotanyTrees only includes recipes for the 46 mods it explicitly supports. If your mod is not on the supported list, its Saplings will not be recognized. You can add support yourself by creating a data pack with a botanypots:crop recipe for that Sapling. Also make sure you have the correct soil type in the pot; all tree recipes require a Dirt-category soil.
Can I speed up tree growth in Botany Pots?
The base growth time is determined by the recipe (2,400 ticks for all BotanyTrees recipes), but the actual speed depends on the soil's growth modifier in Botany Pots. Different soils have different speed multipliers. Farmland, for example, offers a 1.05x multiplier. If you have Botany Pots Tiers installed, upgraded pots also grow faster. Some modpacks may add custom soils with higher multipliers.
Do Botany Pots with trees need sunlight or water?
No. Botany Pots operate independently of light level, water proximity, and surrounding blocks. You can place them underground, indoors, or even in the Nether. The trees will grow at the same rate regardless of placement.
Why am I running out of Saplings?
Vanilla Saplings have a 15% return rate per harvest, and modded Saplings typically only have a 1% return rate. This means Botany Pots are not self-sustaining for Sapling production. You will need an external source of Saplings, such as a traditional tree farm or a trading setup, to keep your pots stocked.
Does BotanyTrees work with Dynamic Trees?
BotanyTrees includes recipes specifically for Dynamic Trees, including a crop subfolder for Dynamic Trees' crop variants. However, compatibility depends on how Dynamic Trees handles its Saplings in your specific version and modpack. If the item IDs match what BotanyTrees expects, it will work.