Sugar Cane

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Sugar cane is a block found as 1–4-block-tall plants near water in the Overworld. As an item, it is an important crafting ingredient.

Obtaining
Sugar cane can be mined instantly with anything.

When the spot a sugar cane block is placed in becomes unsuitable, such as when the supporting block is removed, the sugar cane block uproots and drops as an item. $$, sugar cane uproots immediately after all adjacent water is removed. $$, sugar cane uproots on the next block update or random tick.

A sugar cane block drops itself as an item if a piston tries to push it (trying to pull it does nothing) or moves a block into its space.

Natural generation
Sugar cane can generate naturally near water, as two ($11/18$ chance), three ($5/18$ chance), or four ($2/18$ chance) blocks tall. Rare taller sugar canes can be found if the world generator places two smaller canes on top of each other. It generates in approximately 0.8 sugar cane per chunk seeing as how they only generate near bodies of water.

Sugar canes attempt to generate 10 times in any overworld biome, which requires water. An extra 10 attempts are made in swamp biomes, and 50 in desert biomes, which makes sugar cane twice as frequent in swamps and six times as frequent in desert biomes, but water is more rare in the desert, except in desert lakes.

Trading
Wandering traders can sell sugar cane for an emerald.

Usage
Due to its water-displacing properties, sugar cane can interestingly be used to create underwater paths, allowing players to move at normal speed and breathe if it is two blocks in height. (Java Edition only)

Sugar cane takes on a different shade of green depending on the biome in which it is placed.

Farming


Sugar cane can generate naturally up to four blocks tall, but short plants grow only to a height of three blocks, adding a block of height when the top sugar cane block has received 16 random block ticks (i.e. on average every 18 minutes on Java Edition or 54 minutes on Bedrock Edition, but the actual rate can vary widely). Sugar cane must be planted on a grass block, dirt, coarse dirt, podzol, sand, or red sand that is directly adjacent to water, waterlogged block, or frosted ice (not merely above or diagonal to water), or on top of another sugar cane block. The adjacent water block can be covered with another block, whether opaque or transparent, and sugar cane can still be placed and grow next to it. Sugar cane grows regardless of light level, even in complete darkness.

$$, bone meal can be used to instantly grow sugar cane to three blocks. Only one bone meal is consumed. $$, bone meal cannot be used on sugar cane.

Composting
Placing sugar cane into a composter has a 50% chance of raising the compost level by 1.

Java Edition
These values are generated by the biome dyeing algorithm. See Biome colors for more information.

ID




Metadata
$$, sugar cane uses the following data values:

Trivia

 * When a sugar cane is broken at the second level, the time resets (for example, if a two-block high sugar cane is broken, but is just about to grow to the third stage, it would reset that time).
 * By placing more sugar canes on top of a sugar cane plant, it is possible to create tall sugar canes (up to y=255, the maximum height for building), although they do not naturally grow this high.
 * Before sugar cane received an official name, they were sometimes referred to as bamboo, a block added 9 years later. Other names were "reeds" and "papyrus".