Xenobotany: the greenhouse plant puzzle
Fruit plus two potions, then a pot, in the old greenhouse. Blue and purple under sun in a dry pot gives the Battery Bulb; red and blue in a watered pot gives Murray's plant and the seed.
The answer
Plants are grown in the old greenhouse and appear fully grown in the modern lab. Put a fruit in the machine, add two potions, press the button once, then plant the result in a pot. The order of the two potions does not matter.
| Recipe | Result | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow + green + sun | Climbing plant | Vertical route |
| Yellow + red | Platform bulbs | Standing platforms |
| Purple + yellow, dry pot | Electric plant | Power chain |
| Blue + purple + sun, dry pot | Battery Bulb | Powers the machine holding Murray's seed |
| Red + blue, water pot | Murray's plant | Drops the glowing seed that goes in the time machine |
The potion bottles carry symbols rather than colour names: red is a square, purple a circle, green a figure-eight, blue a triangle, and the yellow bottle reads as a flower pot. If your partner is calling colours and you are seeing symbols, that mismatch is the usual reason a recipe "does not work".
Two of those five recipes — the Battery Bulb and Murray's plant — are confirmed in both of our sources. The other three come from a single video and are marked as such below.
Where this puzzle sits
Xenobotany is the wing of the Temporal Research Centre, reached after the fuse-board reset and after the two crystals in the orrery room are touched together. The time machine in that room is missing a plant, and this puzzle grows the one it wants.
The two eras are linked by glowing bubbles. Touching one together swaps the two of you between the modern white lab and the old brick-and-glass greenhouse, and you will swap more than once. The rule to hold on to: the greenhouse is where things are made, the lab is where they stand finished.
- The explorer in the old greenhouse runs the crop machine: fruit, two potions, button, pot.
- The explorer in the modern lab reads the recipe boards and reports what the room actually needs.
Neither of you can do the other's job, which is why the puzzle stalls when both players crowd the same era.
The flower over the door
A giant pink flower grows across the XENOBOTANY door and blocks the entrance. The fix is not in the lab: the greenhouse explorer finds the young version of the same plant in a pot in the old greenhouse and pulls it out. The giant version in the lab disappears at the same moment.
This is the first proof of the rule the whole wing runs on — pulling a plant in the past removes its grown form in the present — and it is easy to miss because the door looks like scenery rather than a puzzle.
Growing the Battery Bulb
The Battery Bulb is the one people write off as decorative. It is not: it powers the machine that holds Murray's seed, and without it the time machine has nothing to plant.
- Pot: dry.
- Potions: blue + purple.
- Light: sun. A pot in shade will grow the plant and it will not charge anything.
If the bulb grows but the machine stays dark, check the pot before you check the potions. A watered pot gives you a plant with the right shape and no charge.
Murray's seed and the time machine
The last plant in the chain is red + blue in a watered pot. It grows into Murray's plant, and harvesting it drops a glowing seed. Carry that seed to the time machine in the orrery room and plant it there — that is the step the wing exists for.
Both of our sources describe this sequence the same way, including the watered pot. What neither shows clearly is whether the seed can be lost by dropping it in transit; if it vanishes, the machine will still be empty, so check your inventory before you walk back.
Unconfirmed recipes
The climbing plant, the platform bulbs and the electric plant come from one timestamped video and no second source. We are printing them because the pattern — one fruit, two potions, one environment — is confirmed by the other two recipes, and because a wrong recipe here costs you one fruit rather than a reset.
If one of those three produces something unexpected, the page gets corrected rather than quietly edited: the date at the foot of the page changes when it does.
Where this was checked
Two sources, both 21 October 2026: a timestamped playthrough showing the crop machine and the recipe boards, and a written walkthrough that independently gives the Battery Bulb as blue + purple + sunlight and Murray's plant as blue + red + water. Recipes 1 to 3 are single-source. Build checked: 1.1.2, 23 October 2026.
