In Yu-Gi-Oh, people have liked plant decks for a long time.
Since players figured out that plants were the best way to call synchro monsters, duelists all over the world have been using the power of plants in a wide variety of ways.
You can use plants to make a deck that can swarm the field, lock your opponent down, or just summon some big, strong monsters.
So, if you want to add some plant power to your deck, keep reading because we’re about to go over the best plant monsters in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!
18. Phoenixian Cluster Amaryllis
Cluster is a great card that would be higher on the list if it weren’t banned. It can only be special called by its own effect or by the Phoenixian Seed, who isn’t very good.
But you can get Cluster into your graveyard by throwing it away or milling it.
Once it’s in your graveyard, you can special summon it in defense position during your end phase by removing another plant monster from your graveyard.
Even though he has 0 DEF, he’s still a great way to keep blockers or tributes for other plant effects, and if Cluster is destroyed, he’ll deal 800 points of effect damage to your opponent as a final hit.
17. Dandylion
Dandylion is one of the most famous cards from the 5Ds era, so it fits right in at the top of this list.
This handsome guy was in Yugi’s deck because he gave him free Synchro Materials, tokens to sacrifice, use as defense, or do anything else you can think of.
Since this has been “Forbidden,” can you think how powerful it would be if it were legal today?
With all the Link plays, Synchro strategies, and other ideas being thrown around, those Fluff Tokens would fly and raise the ceiling of so many decks, just like they did in the past.
When the WORST a card can do is stop three hits in a row?
That sounds pretty good.
16. Sylvan Hermitree
For a long time, I thought there wouldn’t be a “True Plant deck” in this game. You know, one where the whole plan was based on Plants and their amazing help cards that they’ve collected over the years?
But Sylvan grew up in 2014, and it was then that we got our first real Plant deck.
Looking back, it’s funny that the Sylvan deck was by far the best deck of the time, but most players didn’t realize it at the time.
Patrick Hoban almost went to two straight Worlds because of Sylvans, and Sylvan Hermitree was the strongest of the group.
This tower of fear was and still is one of the most powerful Plants ever to take root. It has strong stats, can rearrange the top cards of your deck for excavation, and gives you more cards when you hit other Plants.
15. Naturia Cherries
Naturia was one of the first models to use plants in a smart way.
All Naturias were based on animals that lived in the forest. So, it wasn’t just a plant deck, but it did have some great plant monsters that are worth talking about.
For instance, the Naturia Cherries card is a great way to make sure you’re never helpless.
If your opponent destroys it in any way, you can use a special ability to bring two more Naturia Cherries from your deck.
If your opponent is going to war and sending a lot of monsters to attack you, this guy is a great way to fight back.
One way to do this is to use them as tuners for a synchro call on your next turn. This will let you bring out some very powerful monsters that you can use to beat your opponent.
14. Splendid Rose
Splendid Rose is a marvelous way to beat your opponent’s big monsters.
You can use its effect to make one of your opponent’s monsters hit half as much.
This is a great way to beat big monsters that your opponent controls without having to call your own big, expensive monster.
All you have to do is send a plant monster from your graveyard to the other side.
Since you have to send cards to the graveyard in order to synchro summon, it’s pretty likely that you’ll be able to use this effect.
13. Eco, Mystical Spirit of the Forest
This guy is like if the character Gorz from “Gorz the Emissary of Darkness” became more green.
When you take damage from an effect, you can special call this guy from your hand and give your opponent the same amount of damage.
This is great when you and your opponent are both down to their last few life points after a long battle.
Your opponent may try to lower your life points by using a burn effect, but you can use this card to turn the tables on them.
Eco also makes it so that neither player can take any more damage from effects for the rest of the turn. This makes it a great card against burn decks.
All you have to do is use it the first time your opponent burns you. After that, you won’t take any burn damage for the rest of the turn, which is a big deal against burn decks.
12. Periallis, Empress of Blossoms
Periallis is one of the best extra-deck extenders that plant decks can use.
For those who don’t know, a “extender” is any card that lets you play more, so you can get to your bigger monsters as soon as possible.
Periallis does this by letting you special summon a level 5 or higher plant monster from your hand or graveyard once per turn.
This can let you bring back some very powerful plant monsters or maybe even special summon big monsters without paying their payment cost.
I like to use this card in a combo where I synchro summon a level 5 plant monster and a level 2 plant monster into it, then use the effect of Periallis to special summon back the level 5 monster right away.
This makes the synchro call incredibly effective, which is exactly what you need to do to win in Yu-Gi-Oh!
11. Meliae of the Trees
Some of the easiest XYZ monsters to call are those with a rank of 3.
You also have some great cards for special summoning level 3 monsters like Crane-Crane, which makes it great that Meliae of the Trees is so easy to call.
Plus, you can remove an XYZ element from this card to either send a plant monster from your deck to the graveyard or special summon one of your dead plant monsters from the graveyard.
This card is almost like a combination of Foolish Burial and Monster Reborn.
Both of those cards were so powerful that they were banned at some point in Yu-Gi-Oh’s history.
10. Sylvan Marshalleaf
Sylvans are one of my favorite types of plants in the Yu-Gi-Oh card game.
If you played Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links when these cards came out, you know how strong they can be.
As a whole, Sylvans are a bit like Lightsworns in that they actively try to mill your deck to make effects happen.
When this little guy is called, you can mill up to two cards from the top of your deck, sending any plant monsters to the graveyard and sending all other cards back to the bottom of your deck.
This makes sure that your mills only put spells and traps in the graveyard that you don’t want to use, like useful plant monsters.
When Marshalleaf is milled, you can kill any face-up or face-down monster your opponent controls.
This is one of the best ways for Sylvans to get rid of something. And if you’re playing a Sylvan deck, you should run this guy for sure!
9. Spore
Spore is definitely one of the cutest Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
When you combine this with the fact that it has a good impact, you have an iconic card.
When this guy is in your graveyard, you can special summon him back onto the field by sending another plant monster to the graveyard.
The level of the monster that was banished is added to Spore’s level. If you remove the right monster, you can set yourself up for a synchro summon.
Because it can be used in so many ways, Spore has become an important part of any plant build, especially those that use synced monsters to win the game.
To get the most out of this guy, you can send it to the graveyard whenever you want with cards like Foolish Burial or Meliae of the Trees. Then, you can combo summon any monster you want, whenever you want.
8. Evil Thorn
Evil Thorn shows that, in the long run, even small affects can have big results.
You can sacrifice a face-up Evil Thorn you control to deal 300 damage to your opponent and then special summon two more Evil Thorns from your deck.
The damage is a nice treat, but the real value here is that you get rid of two monsters in exchange for one.
With two level-1 monsters, you can not only set up a synchro summon by adjusting the levels on your field, but you can also do rank-1 XYZ calls.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, these are rare because it can be hard to fill the field with level 1 monsters. But Evil Thorn makes this very easy.
7. Mystic Tomato
If you’ve ever played an old version of Yu-Gi-Oh, you’ll know who this guy is.
Mystic Tomato was one of the best search cards in Yu-Gi-Oh for a long time. When it was destroyed, you could special summon from your deck any dark monster with 1500 attack points or less.
Often, players would go into a second or third Mystic Tomato before finding their strong combo pieces.
This meant that even if your opponent attacked you three times, you could still search your deck for a monster of your choice.
Mystic Tomato is one of the most famous cards in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh, so if you want to add a bit of nostalgia to your deck, this guy is a great choice.
6. Gigaplant
The “Phantom Darkness” set, which had Gigaplant in it, is one of the most famous in Yu-Gi-Oh’s history.
For many players, this set is the line between the old-school slower sets and the newer faster sets. Yu-Gi-Oh and the Yu-Gi-Oh we know and love today, which is fast-paced and focuses on combos.
This card was one of many strong new cards that came with this set.
It’s a Gemini monster, so to get its effect, you’ll need to normal call it twice. But when you do, it pays off in a big way.
The effect of Gigaplant lets you bring back from your hand or discard any Plant or Insect card.
When you use this effect with Lonefire Blossom, you can make some very powerful combos, most of which are still very powerful in this new version.
And this card was one of the first plant monsters to be used in real tournaments. It started the trend of plants being the “meta” card. That’s one scary monster!
5. Queen of Thorns
When building your deck in Yu-Gi-Oh, there are two main methods to think about.
You can make a beatdown deck that focuses on bringing out big monsters with high attack stats as quickly as possible, or you can make a control deck that focuses on shutting down your opponent as quickly as possible.
Queen of Thorns is one of the best cards that plant decks can use to control the game.
Any time a player wants to call a monster that isn’t a plant, whether it’s a standard summoning or a special summoning, they’ll have to play 1000 life points.
This is great for you, the person whose deck is made up of only plants. But for the other person?
If they don’t also play plants, they can call up to seven monsters before they lose the battle.
Seven monsters is not a lot, especially in current Yu-Gi-Oh.
Combo decks can easily kill 20–30 monsters in one turn, which is way more than what Queen of Thorns lets them do.
This makes this synchro monster great for stopping all kinds of combo decks and making sure your plants stay ahead in the game.
4. Predaplant Chimerafflesia
In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Predaplants were introduced as a new archetype. They are probably the best plant archetype in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!
They focus on fusion summoning, and many of the main-deck Predaplant monsters let you do it more than once per turn!
Chimerafllesia is one of the best ways to combine monsters.
You can get rid of any monster on the field with a level lower than or equal to this card once per turn.
This guy is level 7, so you have a lot of ways to banish him. If that’s not enough for your plan, you can always change its level with effects like Bright Star Dragon.
But back to the effect: whenever Chimerafflesia fights an opponent’s monster, the opponent’s monster loses 1000 attack and Chimerafflesia gains 1000 attack.
Just looking at the numbers, this makes Chimeraflessia a monster with 4500 attack each battle phase, which is the same as a whole Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon.
To beat that attack number, your opponent will have to call in some very strong monsters.
3. Traptrix Rafflesia
Bottomless Trap Hole is one of the best traps in Yu-Gi-Oh because it lets you kill any strong monster that’s been summoned and also sends it away so it can’t come back.
Well, Traptrix Rafflesia is all of those things and more. It lets you use any “Hole” trap card from your deck whenever you want.
With Rafflesia’s effect, you can reach 16 different “Trap Hole” traps, and each one can stop your opponent from doing anything they want to do.
You can kill monsters you call with Bottomless Trap Hole.
With Floodgate Trap Hole, you can turn a monster’s face-up side down for good.
There are so many options!
2. Lonefire Blossom
Here’s the only plant on this list that’s so strong that it’s been banned before (and is still banned in some ways in the OCG).
And Lonefire Blossom is a card that every plant deck needs to have in its main deck. What it does is:
You can give a gift to any face-up plant monster to special summon any other plant monster from your deck.
This includes Lonefire itself, so you can get rid of Lonefire to let your bigger monsters out.
Unlike most other cards that can be used to special summon monsters from the deck, this guy doesn’t have any limits on what you can do.
As long as it’s a plant, you can play it. This lets you play big beatsticks like Gigaplant without even having to Normal summon them.
If you can then normal summon Gigaplant and cause its revival effect, you can bring Lonefire Blossom back from the graveyard and special summon another Gigaplant!
That’s some pretty bad damage.
1. Predaplant Verte Anaconda
The best Predaplant card ever made came out after the ARC-V manga/anime finished, which is kind of sad because Verte Anaconda would have been so cool to see in an anime battle.
The Predaplant Verte Anaconda can almost become any fusion spell you want it to.
By paying 2000 life points, you can send a “Polymerization” or “Fusion” spell from your deck to the graveyard, making this guy’s impact the same as that card.
You can’t fusion summon during the turn you use this ability, though.
But if you send a quick-play spell like Super Polymerization, you can use fusion summon as a quick effect at any time during your opponent’s turn!
The fact that Super Polymerization also lets you steal your opponent’s monsters to use as fusion material basically makes this guy an unbeatable powerhouse that is a must-have for plant decks and meta decks alike.
