Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Every fruit tree and where to plant them

Fruit are an iconic part of Animal Crossing games since the Nintendo GameCube. While Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn't have a ton of fruit variety, the classics are still here for you to enjoy. Fruit can be planted to populate your island with more trees, and different fruits can be sold to earn Bells fast. You can even use fruits in the new cooking mechanic that's coming to the new 2.0 update. Here are all the fruits available in the game, how to get them and what you can do with them.

How to get fruit

Every island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons comes with several fruit trees growing on it. They will all be of the same type, but that variety is determined randomly. The starting fruit varieties are:

• Apple
• Cherry
• Orange
• Pear
• Peach

Regardless of what type you have, the trees will follow the same rules. You can shake the tree by pressing A, and three pieces of fruit will fall off. If you use the ax to chop a fruit tree for wood, all of the fruit will also fall off with the first swing. You can then press Y to pick up the fruit and put it in your pockets. Picking up multiple fruit of the same type will "stack" them in your pockets, with up to 10 fruits being stackable before starting a new stack. This makes carrying fruit around much easier if you want to earn Bells) by selling them.

Nook Miles fruit

There are two other types of "fruit" that can't be obtained on your island, namely coconuts and bamboo shoots. They will never appear on your starting island. Instead, you get them by buying a Nook Miles Ticket with 2,000 Nook Miles from the Nook Stop terminal at Resident Services. Visit the airport, and you can use the ticket to go on a Mystery Tour, visiting an island where you can harvest anything you want.

Some of these islands will have your island's "sister fruit", a randomly generated foreign fruit that you can get on Nook Miles islands. Each island has one sister fruit, and it's a good way to make some Bells from foreign fruit if you take some back home to plant. Coconut trees will also line the beach of these islands, and you may find an island full of bamboo trees on occassion. Shake those trees like you would any other, and fruit will fall off. To harvest bamboo shoots, you'll have to dig up the star-shaped dig spots found near bamboo trees. They may look like there's a fossil hidden there, but it's actually a bamboo shoot!

Unlike other fruit trees, you need to plant coconuts on the beach. The game will let you put them on grass, but they'll never grow past the nursery version, unless you place a sand path on a patch of grass after unlocking terraforming. Find a nice spot for them on the beach, and they'll grow to full size in three days and start bearing fruit. Coconuts and bamboo shoots sell for 250 Bells each and can be used to make your island unique.

How to get foreign fruit

Fruit that's native to your island sells for 100 Bells, but fruit that originated elsewhere sells for 500 each. You can get your "sister fruit" from a Nook Miles Ticket island, and your mom also sends you foreign fruit at the beginning of the game. However, you'll still be missing at least two kinds of fruit. That means to get a really profitable orchard going, you're going to need to do some traveling. The best way to get a full variety of fruit is to engage in multiplayer play with friends. They can visit their island's airport and let Orville know they're interested in visitors. Your friends will need to connect to the internet, which may require updating the game software.

If you've already added someone as a friend on your Nintendo Switch, your friends can choose to open to all friends or "Best friends" which you can send requests for within the Best Friends List app on your Nook Phone. Alternatively, they can request a five-digit Dodo Code and share it with you. Visit your airport and tell Orville you want to fly, and you'll be prompted to enter the code.

Of course, you can open your town to nearby or online friends as well, just follow the prompts on-screen when telling Orville you'd like to invite friends over. Bring some of your native fruit, and you can drop it for your friend to pick up. They can drop some fruit for you, or you can shake down some of their trees and take them back home to plant.

How to plant trees

Your native fruit can be sold for 100 Bells each, and new fruit will appear on those trees three days later. If you want to grow more trees, you can dig a hole with your shovel, stand next to it, open your inventory and select a piece of fruit. A prompt will appear to plant it. Press A and you'll bury the fruit, and a nursery tree will appear. The tree will take three days to grow to full size, transitioning from nursery to small young tree, to a medium young tree. Make sure to leave enough room for it to expand. If you can dig a hole between the sapling and the nearest tree in all eight directions away from your sapling, you're good.

If you want to move it during this time, you can dig it up with your shovel and the growing tree will appear in your inventory. You can then replant it without losing any progress for its growth. Once it's fully grown, you'll need some help to dig it up. Luckily, that boost is close at hand. Just go into your inventory and eat a piece of fruit. You can eat up to 10 pieces of fruit to gain a buff that gives you the strength to dig up fully grown trees or shatter rocks when you hit them. Every time you use that strength, the buff ticks down by one. You can also get rid of it by using your toilet.

Fruit and bamboo trees can only be planted on the grass. Dig a hole on the beach, and the plant prompt just won't appear. A Nook Miles+ task to plant fruit trees regularly appears and awards 100 Miles, so look out for that to be efficient. You'll also earn progress towards the Fruit Roots challenge for each type of fruit tree you plant.

What can I do with fruit?

As previously mentioned, Nintendo announced that cooking would be coming to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Vegetables and grains are heading to the game, which can be used alongside fruit to craft DIY recipe foods. It looks like you can prepare drinks, soups, and baked goods, so you'll definitely have a lot of things to do with everything you grow on your island! Just like regular fruit, food made with DIY recipes can be eaten. They'll give you an even bigger buff than single pieces of fruit will, so it's great for when you want to dig up lots of trees. We'll update this space as soon as the new cooking mechanics are unveiled.

Fruit can also be used in DIY crafting recipes, with different fruits used in specific recipes. Players can craft furniture, clothing, wallpaper, among other items with fruit. Who would have thought that crushing up oranges could give you wallpaper to decorate your home?

An apple a day keeps the Nook away

The wide variety of things you can do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons warrants its addition to the list of best Nintendo Switch games. Collecting different kinds of fruit, crafting furniture and clothing, and cooking with them are all fun activities that make the game that much more enjoyable. Follow these steps, and you'll be raking in plenty of Bells, and your island will look great.