How to Make Palm Trees in Minecraft

Gathering Materials

Locate the area where you want to make the palm tree. Minecraft, being an open-world survival sandbox game, allows to to go anywhere you like, so start by walking around until you find a place where you want to build your palm tree. Look for a suitable place, like a sandy beach, an oasis in the desert (patch of water surrounded by sand), or a Savannah. These areas are great because they most resemble the areas where palm trees are most common in the real world. Look for dry-looking areas next to bodies of water, with lots of sand or yellowing grass. There’s no guarantee that you’ll find the area immediately, since all the areas are randomly generated, but as long as you keep exploring, you’ll find them eventually!

Harvest wood for the trunk. Seeing as most available editions of Minecraft have several varieties of wood, for a more realistic-looking palm tree, Jungle wood would be best. It shares a similar texture to most real-life palm tree trunks. Jungle wood can be difficult to find though, since jungles are somewhat of a rare biome, but you can use Acacia wood or even Birch for the base of your trunk. To harvest wood for the trunk of your palm tree, walk up to the trunk of an Acacia, Birch, or Jungle wood tree. Hold down the left mouse button (PC), press the Right Trigger button (Xbox), or tap the object and hold (PE); this will harvest the wood for the trunk of your palm tree.

Gather materials for the leaves of your palm tree. You can use most types of leaf block except (ironically) for Jungle leaves, since the texture has those yellowish bulbs in them and ruins the illusion of the palm leaf. You can use Green Wool, since it's visually close to the color and texture of palm leaves. To gather leaves, you must first craft Shears to cut them with. Craft Shears using 2 iron ingots laid out diagonally on your inventory’s crafting grid. You can access your inventory by pressing the E button (PC), the Y (Xbox), or by tapping on the crafting table (PE). Next, simply select your tool, and hold down the left mouse button (PC), press the Right Trigger button, or tap (PE) on the leaves. Green Wool can be made by putting green dye next to your wool on the crafting grid. Green dye can be acquired by smelting a cactus block in your furnace.

Building the Trunk

Start by stacking three blocks of wood vertically. On the PC, you can do this by pressing the number corresponding to your item in your hotbar, which can be located on the bottom of your screen, or using the mouse scroll button to select your item, then right-clicking on the area. On the Xbox, you can select your items by pressing the Right and Left Bumper buttons, then placing them by pressing the Left Trigger button. On the Pocket Edition, simply tap on the desired item. If your material is missing from the hotbar, access your inventory and place it on your hotbar. If your hotbar is full, select an item you want to put in the inventory, then select an empty slot in your inventory to deposit it in. Alternately, select your desired item from the inventory, then select the item you want to replace and place it where your desired item was. This is how the trunk should look like when viewed from the front: w = wood f = foliage block e = easily breakable block w w w This pillar will serve as a base for your tree.

Place any easily breakable block next to the uppermost block in the pillar. Dirt is the most common to use. Wood planks, a different kind of wood block, and even clay blocks would suffice if you don’t have dirt.

Place two blocks of Jungle wood on top of the easily breakable block in a sort of diagonal fashion. It should look like this: w w e w w

Break the easily breakable block. This will make the illusion of a bent trunk more convincing, and should look like this: w w w w

Stack more blocks to create a more arcing trunk. To do this, stack another block on top of the diagonally placed block, and place another block diagonally from that one. Finally, add the last block horizontally from the direction your arc is facing, like so: w w w w w w w And there you go! A nice, arching trunk!

Making the Leaves

Take your leaves or wool, and go to the top of your tree trunk. You would need to invest in some more easily-breakable material to access the top of your tree trunk easily. Simply go beside your tree, preferably at the side or a space away from the tip of the arc, point your camera downwards, jump using the spacebar (PC), pressing A (Xbox), or the square symbol on the screen (PE), then place out block below you. This is the easy way to “build up,” as it were. Once you’re done with the top of the tree, break the pillar of easily breakable material so that the tree looks more natural.

Start by making a horizontal cross-shape with your leaf material about four blocks long per spoke. Then add two blocks on top of the center and the spoke facing the direction the arc is. It should look like this from the top: L= leaf X = empty space Top layer X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X L X X X X X X L X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Bottom layer X X X L X X X X X X L X X X X X X L X X X X X X L X X X L L L L L L L X X X L X X X X X X L X X X X X X L X X X X X X L X X X

Add two more blocks on top of the first leaf layer. One should be placed on the center and the other must face the same direction as the tree’s arc. This will enforce the illusion of arching leaves that all palm trees have.

Create the downward arc of the leaves. Like with your trunk, place any block below a spoke, put another leaf material block in the same direction your spoke is facing, then break the support block again to create a downward arc. It would look like this from the side: l = leaf w = wood L L L L L L L L L L w w L w w w w w Repeat for the other spokes,and there you have it! A simple palm tree! You can stop here if you want, but the next step adds another set of leaves so it looks even more convincing.

Create diagonally-arching palm leaves. This step is mostly optional but would make the tree look more convincing and natural. You can build diagonal leaves by creating a two-by-two block between the corners of the spoke, then destroying two blocks diagonally. You can then repeat the step with the outermost diagonal block as the corner block, and then repeating until it's a straight diagonal line. Afterwards, just combine the step for creating a downward arc with this method to create a diagonally-arcing palm leaf. L X X L X X L X L X L X L X X X L L L X X X X X L X X X L L L L L L L X X X L X X X X X L L L X X X L X L X L X L X X L X X L There you have it, your very own, very “authentic” palm tree!