Start with these ideas
- Flowers stay outside the sets and pair. Expose each flower and draw a replacement from the end of the wall.
- Each group has numbers 1–4, matching East, South, West and North seat winds.
- Our house rules award 1 per matching flower and 1 extra per complete group. There is no no-flower bonus or automatic flower win.
The four plants: Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo
Each flower tile appears once. In our tile set the plant group is numbered Plum 1, Orchid 2, Chrysanthemum 3 and Bamboo 4. A flower showing Bamboo is still a flower, not one of the numbered Bamboo suit tiles.
The four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
The season group is numbered Spring 1, Summer 2, Autumn 3 and Winter 4. Together the two groups add eight flowers to the 136 ordinary tiles, making 144 tiles when flowers are enabled.
Expose → replace → check the replacement
After drawing a flower, reveal it beside your hand. Draw one replacement from the end of the wall. If that replacement is another flower, reveal it too and repeat. Only an ordinary tile joins the sets-and-pair structure.
For example, start an ordinary turn with 13 usable tiles. Draw Orchid, expose it, then draw Summer: you still have 13 usable tiles. Expose Summer and replace again. Receiving 3 Dots gives you 14 usable tiles plus two flowers set aside. Now check for a win or discard one tile. Exposing flowers does not break Concealed Hand.
Matching flowers follow your seat wind
Under sc_hk13_v1_2, East matches Plum and Spring; South matches Orchid and Summer; West matches Chrysanthemum and Autumn; North matches Bamboo and Winter. Each matching flower adds 1 faan to an otherwise complete, non-limit hand. A flower matching another seat adds nothing on its own.
With East as your seat and round wind, a concealed All Chows hand won on a discard scores 2 faan. Add Plum and it becomes 3, meeting the standard minimum. Change the round wind alone and the flower bonus stays the same; change your seat to South and Plum no longer matches.
| Seat / number | Matching flowers |
|---|---|
| East · 1 | Plum + Spring |
| South · 2 | Orchid + Summer |
| West · 3 | Chrysanthemum + Autumn |
| North · 4 | Bamboo + Winter |
The ordinary tiles above are the same in all three linked examples: concealed All Chows, discard win, East seat and round. Only the selected flowers change.
A complete group adds another faan
Collect all four plants or all four seasons and that complete group adds 1 faan, on top of matching-seat flowers. Four flowers mixed between groups are not a complete group.
For East, all four plants contribute Plum 1 + complete plant group 1 = 2 flower faan. The same 2-faan concealed All Chows hand now scores 4. All eight flowers contribute two matching flowers + two complete groups = 4 flower faan, taking that hand to 6. Eight flowers alone do not win: the ordinary tiles must still form a legal hand. Limit patterns settle at 8 without adding these bonuses.
Check the flower rules before playing
The browser table uses flowers. The faan calculator can disable them for a single calculation: it clears selected flowers and their bonuses, and turning flowers back on starts with none selected. Neither action changes a saved game.
Check three separate agreements at a table: which flowers match your seat, whether a complete group adds a bonus, and whether no flowers or a flower-only win is recognised. The cited HKMA flower rules award a no-flower bonus and provide special flower wins; our browser rules do neither. Our eight-flower example still needs a complete ordinary hand.
Replacing a flower is not declaring a Kong. A win after a flower replacement does not become Kong Draw just because both actions draw from the end of the wall. Read the event conditions as well as the tiles.
Sources
A few things to know
Do flowers count among the thirteen tiles?
No. Flowers are exposed separately and replaced. In an ordinary turn without Kongs, the usable hand goes from 13 to 14 after receiving an ordinary tile, then back to 13 after discarding.
Does replacing a flower break Concealed Hand?
Not under our house rules. Exposing a flower is not an exposed Chow, Pung or Kong. A flower replacement is not itself a Kong, either.
Does any four-flower collection count as a complete group?
No. Under our rules it must be all four plants or all four seasons. A mix of two from each group does not receive the complete-group bonus; any matching-seat flowers still count individually.
Do eight flowers automatically win here?
No. They contribute four flower faan to a complete non-limit hand under our house rules. Different tables may recognise flower wins, so check before playing.