Glow berries are a small orange fruit that grows on cave vines, almost always inside lush caves. The vines that hold them give off light, the berries are edible, and foxes love them. Find a lush cave and you get renewable food and natural light, plus a way to make friendly foxes.
This guide covers where to find glow berries, how to harvest and farm them, how the light and food mechanics work, and the small differences between Java and Bedrock.
What are glow berries?
Glow berries are an item and a plant block, added in the 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Part 1 update. The plant itself is called a cave vine, and the berries grow on the underside of the vine in clusters. A vine segment can either have berries on it or not, and only the segments with berries produce light.
The berries are a food item. The plant they grow on is a placeable block you can harvest and farm.
Where to find glow berries
Glow berries appear naturally in lush cave biomes. Lush caves are an underground biome added in the same update, marked by moss blocks, azalea trees, dripleaf plants, and clusters of glow berry vines hanging from cave ceilings.
The easiest way to find a lush cave is to look for an azalea or flowering azalea tree on the surface. Azaleas grow on top of lush caves, so digging carefully below one will usually drop you into the biome. The flowering azalea is easier to spot from a distance because of its pink flowers. The plain azalea has only dark green leaves and blends in with regular forest.
You can also stumble into a lush cave while mining or exploring caves normally. They tend to appear at medium depths, generally between Y=0 and Y=60, though they can show up higher or lower depending on the world.
How to harvest glow berries
You harvest glow berries by interacting with a vine that already has berries on it. The vine itself does not break. The berries pop off into your inventory, and the vine segment stays in place.
- Right-click (Java) or use (Bedrock) a vine segment that has berries.
- The berries detach. You keep the vine.
- The same segment can produce berries again later.
If you instead break the vine block, you destroy that section of the plant. You still get the berries from that segment as a drop, but you have to replant the vine if you want it to keep growing.
Shears work, but there is no advantage. Most players harvest with an empty hand.
How to grow and farm glow berries
To plant glow berries, place them on the bottom face of a solid block. They grow downward from there as a cave vine, one segment at a time.
A single vine can reach up to roughly 26 blocks long before it stops growing. Each new segment has a chance to fruit. Existing segments without berries can also produce berries later. Growth is on the slow side compared to most crops, so a glow berry farm is something you set up and check on rather than babysit.
A simple setup looks like this:
- Place a row of solid blocks at the ceiling of a room.
- Plant glow berries on the bottom face of each block.
- Give the vines space to grow downward, ideally 5 to 26 blocks of open air.
- Come back periodically and right-click ripe vines to collect berries.
Light level does not affect growth. The plant grows just as well in a fully dark cave as in a brightly lit room. Water is not required either, so you can farm glow berries anywhere there is a ceiling and air below it.
Bone meal speeds things up, but how it works depends on which edition you play. More on that below.
Glow berries vs. sweet berries
Players often mix the two up because both are red-orange and both have “berries” in the name. They are different items with different behaviors:
- Glow berries grow on cave vines hanging from ceilings. Sweet berries grow on sweet berry bushes on the ground.
- Glow berries do nothing when you walk under them. Sweet berry bushes deal damage on contact.
- Glow berries emit light. Sweet berries do not.
- Sweet berries restore 2 hunger and 1.2 saturation. Glow berries restore 2 hunger and 0.4 saturation, so sweet berries fill you up a bit better.
- Both work for breeding foxes.
If you want light and food in one plant, glow berries win. If you want pure food efficiency, sweet berries edge them out.
What glow berries do
As a food
Eating one glow berry restores 2 hunger points (one drumstick icon) and a small amount of saturation. That is not much. Glow berries are a snack food, not a main course. They work well early game or as emergency food while exploring, but a stack of bread or steak feeds you for much longer.
The plant is renewable and grows on its own, so the value is in steady access rather than how much each berry fills you up.
As a light source
A cave vine segment with berries emits light level 14. That matches a torch and sits one level below the brightest light sources in the game, like lanterns and glowstone at 15. It is enough light to keep most mobs from spawning underneath, as long as the area is reasonably covered.
The light only comes from segments that currently have berries. A bare vine segment gives off no light. Harvesting the berries drops that segment back to zero light until berries regrow on it.
A glow berry farm doubles as ambient lighting. Cave vines also work as pure decoration, dropping into rooms from rafters or trailing down from overhangs.
In a composter
You can throw glow berries into a composter. Each berry has a 30 percent chance to raise the composter’s fill level by one. They are not the most efficient compost input, but if you have a surplus from a vine farm, the composter is a reasonable way to convert them into bone meal.
Glow berries and foxes
Foxes are drawn to glow berries. The most common uses:
- Feed two glow berries to two adult foxes to put them in love mode and breed them. The baby fox that spawns trusts you, which is the only reliable way to get a fox that does not run away.
- Drop a glow berry on the ground near a wild fox, and it may pick the berry up in its mouth.
The breeding trick is the more important of the two. If you want a friendly fox, glow berries and sweet berries are the only foods that work. Glow berries are usually easier to keep on hand once you have a vine farm running.
Tips and common mistakes
- Glow berries are not the same as glow ink sacs or glow lichen. Recipes that call for glow ink sacs will not accept glow berries.
- The berries do not give off light when held in your hand or sitting in your inventory. They only emit light when growing on a vine.
- You can break a cave vine with any tool or with your hand. Berries drop either way. No need to switch tools.
- You cannot place a vine sideways or upward. It only grows down from the underside of a block.
- Bone meal on the wrong segment can be wasted in Java. Only segments without berries respond to bone meal there. Segments that already fruited will not respond.
- If your farm has stopped growing, check the open air below the vines. Once a vine reaches its max length, it stops, and you may need to harvest from the top instead of the bottom to free up space.
Java vs. Bedrock differences
Most mechanics are the same across both editions, but bone meal behavior differs:
- In Java, bone meal causes a bare vine segment to fruit. It does not extend the vine itself.
- In Bedrock, bone meal can both grow new vine segments downward and fruit existing segments.
Vine length, light level, food value, and composter chance are the same on both editions.
Frequently asked questions
Can you eat glow berries?
Yes. Hold them and right-click (Java) or press the use button (Bedrock) to eat. Each berry restores 2 hunger and a small amount of saturation.
Do glow berries restore a lot of hunger?
No. One berry restores 2 hunger points, the same as one drumstick on the hunger bar. They are better treated as a snack than as a main food.
How much light do glow berries give?
A cave vine segment with berries emits light level 14, the same as a torch. Bare segments emit no light.
Can you bone meal glow berries?
Yes. In Java, bone meal causes a bare segment to fruit. In Bedrock, bone meal can also extend the vine downward. Either way, bone meal speeds up a vine farm.
Do glow berries grow back?
Yes. When you right-click a vine to harvest, the segment stays in place and can produce berries again over time. There is no replanting required.
How do you breed foxes with glow berries?
You cannot tame a wild fox, but you can breed two wild foxes with glow berries (or sweet berries) to produce a baby fox that trusts you. Lead the foxes near each other, feed each one a berry, and the kit that spawns will not flee.
Are glow berries renewable?
Yes. A single planted vine produces berries on its own indefinitely, so a small farm of three or four vines gives you a steady supply.
One last tip
If you are growing cave vines for decoration rather than food, prune the vines to the length you want first, then let them fruit. Once a segment is in place, it keeps producing berries on its own schedule, and the vines stay lit without growing past the height you planned for.