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Flower from the Mountaintop

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I climbed all the way up this mountain for THIS?

"There's a flower that only blooms on this mountain top. We're going to get it."
Fuse, SaGa Frontier

A character must climb to the top of the mountain to obtain a rare flower. The reason behind this varies. It may be because the flower is an ingredient in the cure to a disease, to prove his love for someone or to her father or even just to prove that he could climb to the top of Skullcrusher Mountain and come back alive.

In a series set in a "realistic" universe, the flower used is often edelweiss, which grows in the Alps. Unfortunately, many people in Real Life have fallen to their deaths trying to pick it, since it's rarer than The Theme Park Version of the Alps would have one believe, and often grows in inaccessible places.

The flower does not need to be on a literal mountaintop to fit this trope: any place which is very dangerous or difficult to access will do.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Used in Kimagure Orange Road, only that in this case, a young man has to go fetch some snow from the mountaintop as a test of character to see if he's worthy of marrying the girl he likes. She's the only daughter of a family with Psychic Powers and he's a just a normal human.... The girl likes the guy so much that she uses her powers to help him out, and the parents give them their blessing anyway. The young couple are Takeshi and Akemi, the parents of the male lead, Kyousuke Kasuga, and his sisters Kurumi and Manami.
  • Subverted in the last Tenchi Muyo! OAV. Tenchi's mother is injured climbing a mountain for a healing herb... which grows abundantly in the valley below.
  • In Blood+, Saya wants a suitable present for her father on his birthday, and decides on a uniquely-colored flower which is hanging on the side of a cliff. Haji tells her it's too dangerous, but she's insistent on getting the flower, so Haji decides to retrieve it for her. Unfortunately, he slips, and is mortally wounded in the fall. In order to save his life, Saya feeds him some of her blood, turning him into a chiropteran chevalier in the process.
  • .hack:
    • Occurs in .hack//SIGN. Tsukasa is entrusted with a grunty which gets sick. To cure it, he must collect a rare herb from a very high level dungeon, even though he is very low level. He is able to get it, but he doesn't return in time and the grunty dies anyway.
    • Also occurs in .hack//Legend of the Twilight, where Tsukasa's (and Elk's) near-identical counterpart asks Sugo-in-Kite's-avatar to help her get a Pfenix Feather from a high-level Cerberus to save a sick baby grunty, even though they are both at very low levels. She goes with him, and they get the feather in time to heal it.
  • One Piece: Chopper gets a rare medicinal herb to save the doctor who raised him. The plant? A toxic species of mushroom known as a Jolly Roger. The doctor knew it was poisonous from the beginning, but couldn't tell the poor kid that he risked his life for nothing.
  • More than one of the Seven Colors Flower's sightseeings in Hana no Ko Lunlun happen in mountains. In one of these, Lunlun plummets to her death and has to be revived by the Flower Star Spirits.
  • An episode of Inuyasha follows Rin on a journey to retrieve a rare plant from a cliff to cure Jakken of poison.
  • The Tale of the Princess Kaguya: In order to win the hand of Princess Kaguya, the first suitor quests himself to pluck a branch from the tree of jewels that grows on the Mountain of Horai. He later shows up with a counterfeit made by craftsmen.
  • Moomin (1990): In "The Great Race", the Witch and Mr. Brisk compete to see if her broom or his hot-air balloon flies better by having a race to the top of Lonely Mountains to pick up a starshaped white flower that grows only there. The Witch wins the race and gives the flower for Mr. Hemulen to plant in his garden.
    • In another episode, "Snorkmaiden's Lost Memory" Snorkmaiden gained Easy Amnesia from attempting to reach a flower she thought was Edelweiss, slightly inverted that she climbed down to reach the flower initially, and ends up climbing down because she and Moomin judged trying climbing back up was too dangerous, only to lose her footing on the way.

    Comic Books 
  • In the comic book Asterix in Switzerland, Asterix had to bring to the druid Getafix an edelweiss flower from the Alps, so he can make a cure for someone who's been deliberately poisoned.
  • In The Smurfs comic book version of "The Astro Smurf", one of Astro's challenges to become a Swoof is to get an edelweiss flower from the top of a mountain before sundown, and given that this task takes place around sundown, this gives Astro very little time to accomplish it. After being unable to climb up the mountain, Astro sees a stork and uses it to complete the challenge in record time.

    Fairy Tales 

    Fanfic 
  • Getting a flower from a stupidly hostile environment and bringing it to the Fortress-Monastery unmarred (it is acceptable to steal from your competitors, and even from their corpses) is part of the initiation trials for the Emperor's Nightmares, a fan-made chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.
    "So what did you do with your posie? Frame it?"
    The Nightmare was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was with the faintest trace of emotion in his always gentle tone.
    "Brother Laertes crushed it."
  • It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door: The story’s central plotline focuses on Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash seeking to retrieve the Beneviolet, a flower with magical healing properties that only grows high in the Archback Mountains, to heal the Horn Rot affecting Twilight. Exaggerated in that to reach the Archbacks they first have to cross the Everfree Forest and climb over the Drackenridge Mountains, then cross the country of Gildedale, then cross the Shimmerwood forest, and then climb up the Archbacks and have fight the enormous World Snake on whose head the only good Beneviolet they found happened to be growing.

    Film — Animated 
  • Parodied in Shrek when Fiona tells Donkey to get a blue flower with red thorns, just to get him out of the way. Donkey does find the flower, after a moment of freaking out because he's colorblind. But he gets it right.
  • Once Upon a Forest: The kids have to retrieve two kinds of plants to heal their friend. This involves a long journey to another meadow. While one of them is plentiful and easy to get, the more important one only grows on a high cliff. They have to construct a muscle-powered flying machine in order to get it.

    Film — Live Action 
  • Inverted in Batman Begins. Bruce is told to pick up a flower in a field and then he has to climb the mountaintop to get to the monastery. The flower is also the source of a powerful hallucinogen that the film's version of Scarecrow weaponises into his signature fear gas.
  • Ofelia of Pan's Labyrinth tells her mother and unborn brother a story about a rose on top of a terrible mountain. Whoever plucks the rose wins eternal life, but the thorns of the rose are full of deadly poison. People who mention it only talk about their fear of death and pain, so the rose sits on the mountain, wilting more each day because it can't give its gift away.
  • Parodied in Fantozzi In Paradiso. Ms. Silvani convinces Ugo Fantozzi to pick up an edelweiss from a mountaintop, for her. He reaches the mountaintop and tries to pick up the flower, only to discover that it has an enormous root that was holding the whole mountain together. He rips off the root and creates a huge avalanche that buries Ms. Silvani under a meter of snow.
  • The martial arts epic The Bride With White Hair has a Framing Device in which the main character's lover is waiting on a mountain in order to obtain a rare flower.
  • Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: A science team travels to the jungle of Borneo to collect the blood orchid, a rare flower that possesses the key to longevity. However, it's located deep within giant snake-invested territory.
  • In Werewolf of London (1935) a botanist seeks a rare flower that only blooms in moonlight. He is bitten by a werewolf and must grow the flower in England to save himself, as it is the only cure.
  • Beyond Sherwood Forest: In the Dark Woods, Robin has to climb to the top of a mountain in order to pick the fruit that will allow Alina to regain her mortality.
  • In Bettada HoovuTranslation a Tearjerker of a Sandalwood movie, a young boy makes a living plucking and selling flowers from a mountain to feed his extremely poor family. However, he makes such a paltry amount from selling these flowers, that in the end, he is forced to choose to spend what little money he has, between a textbook he badly needs to stay in school, or a blanket to keep his family warm in the coming winter. He chooses the blanket

    Literature 
  • In The Twelve Kingdoms, a young girl is sent on such a mission by her cruel mistress.
  • In Feist's Riftwar saga, Prince Arutha has to go get the extremely rare Silverthorn flower from the top of a mountain of death infested by dark elves, as it's the only way to save his fiancée from a painful death by poison. Notable in that it's the same flower used to make the poison and the dark elves use it both because it's so deadly and so rare, meaning enemies will have a hard time getting a sample to make a cure.
  • In the Redwall book Salamandastron, Thrugg (and Dumble, who followed him) sets out to pick the Flowers of Icetor from the northern mountains to cure a devastating plague at the Abbey. They're guarded by possibly the biggest animal in the entire series (the Wild King MacPhearsome's legs are as big around as Thrugg, and he's a big otter), but Thrugg challenges him for the flowers anyway, and he ends up flying Dumble back to the Abbey.
  • Used literally in William Shatner's Star Trek: Captain's Blood.
  • Susan Cooper's fifth book in The Dark is Rising series has the eponymous Silver on the Tree, a bloom that happens rarely. Of course, the battle is waged around the tree, because the other side understands the importance as well.
  • The 'story arc' of the children's book The King of the Copper Mountains involves The Wonder Doctor journeying to a far away land to recover the Golden Speedwell, a magical plant that will rejuvenate the titular king.
  • In "Ararat", the first The People story by Zenna Henderson, the colony welcomes yet another teacher from Outside. The kids are warned not to levitate or use any Psychic Powers around her, as this has driven several Outsiders insane. Jemmy immediately falls in love with the young woman, Valancy, who seems rather sad. Marriage with an Outsider is unheard-of and when he proposes to her anyway she turns him down with a literal It's Not You, It's Me ! On the first day of classes, he presents her with a bouquet of red autumn leaves. These come only from trees that grow far up on the mountain, so he flew up there secretly. But in the schoolroom, two identical bouquets are found in the inkwells of a double-seated desk to welcome twins starting the first grade. If Jemmy didn't put them there, who did?
  • In Alan Garner's mystical novel The Moon of Gomrath, when Susan is reduced to a coma after the exorcism of a powerful Celtic spirit of evil, her brother Colin is sent on a moonlight quest into Faerie to find the one thing that will restore her sundered soul to her body. He passes from the surface-England into the superimposed England of Faerie and locates the magical plant that will restore her. To get this, he has to climb a steep forbidding cliff-face.
  • In The Book and the Sword, a Wuxia novel by Jin Yong, the protagonist picks a "Heavenly Mountain snow lotus" (scientifically known as Saussurea involucrata in real life, a rare flower that grows in high altitudes in the Tian Shan, or "Heavenly Mountain-Range") from a cliffside to impress The Chief's Daughter.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Band of Brothers has one of the officers pointing out that a dead German soldier has a sprig of edelweiss in his helmet band. It "only grows above the tree line", the implication being that he hiked up and got it sometime in the past.
  • In the old Adventures Of Superman TV show, Superman was sent to get edelweiss for Lois Lane for her wedding (it was something a villain prompted her to request as the setup to some dastardly plot).
  • In an episode of Dinosaurs, Charlene needed to get the (aptly named) MacGuffin lily in order to change her scent, which was supposed to attract her true love (hers was a big, oafish brute). She arrives to the mountain top only to find that the field had been cleared away to make room for a photo booth. When she returns, however, she finds that her scent had changed nonetheless, apparently triggered by her desire to improve herself and not settle.
  • Babylon 5 references this trope briefly in the fifth season episode Learning Curve. Ranger Instructor Turval explains the importance of following orders to a headstrong pupil by asking if he would be willing to undertake a mission to climb to the top of a high mountain and retrieve a single flower from the summit, knowing that he would certainly die immediately afterwards. Of course not, the student replies, such a mission would be trivial. But what if, the instructor asks, the flower was a symbol, which would inspire a resistance movement that would free millions of people from oppression and slavery? The student grudgingly agrees that such a task would be worth dying for.
  • Sexiest example of this trope: In the NBC series Crusoe, the title character must climb a mountain and then rappel down a forbidding cliff on his island in order to retrieve a rare plant that is needed to create a medicine to cure a delirious Friday. Not only that, but he has to cut his rope (the stump it was tied to above pulled out and fell down past him, threatening to yank him off the cliff face), forcing Olivia, the medically savvy temporary visitor to the island who was posing as a man and who was along on the climb helping him find the right plant, to save him. She does this by removing all her clothes and unwinding her bindings to fashion a make-shift rope and then, completely naked, proceeding to haul him back up to the top.
  • The basis of one of the goofier episodes of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger / first season Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. They somehow know that the pollen of a rare flower that can be found on a remote mountaintop is the only thing that can break the spell the Monster of the Week has cast on the heroes, a giant turtle with a traffic light sticking out of his neck that shoots Frickin' Laser Beams that can either make someone run uncontrollably or freeze them completely stiff.
  • The first episode of A Great Welsh Adventure has Griff Rhys Jones go to the top of Mount Snowdon in search of a relict called the Snowdon Lily as part of his quest to rediscover his Welsh roots.
  • An excellent example can be found in Season 1, Episode 4 of BBC’s Merlin (2008). To make an antidote for a magical poison, Arthur must retrieve the rare Mortaeus Flower which only grows in one place: the distant caves beyond the Forests of Balor. He’s warned that it will be a long and dangerous journey, so much so that Uther forbids him from going. But of course he goes anyway; if he doesn't then Merlin will die from Nimueh's poison. Arguably an Act of True Love if you go in for that sort of thing.

    Music 
  • Rammstein's "Rosenrot" details the story of a man who tries to climb a mountain to retrieve a rose for his lover, and consequently falls to his death. This is based on a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called "Heidenröslein" or "Heideröslein" ("Rose on the Heath" or "Little Rose of the Field"), which itself is based on a song from the 16th century. However, Goethe's version sounds more like rape than picking flowers.

    Myth & Legend 
  • Older Than Dirt: The Epic of Gilgamesh has him searching for a magical flower; he finally does have it, then a snake eats it. Also an inversion: the flower was the Consolation Prize for not getting true immortality, as it just makes you younger so you can live a bit longer. It also leads to Lamarck Was Right since it explains why snakes shed their skin: they do it to renew their youth.
  • In the Ramayana, Lakshmana, the younger brother of Rama, is struck by a arrow tipped with an incredibly rare and deadly poison during the war. The only cure for it is from a rare flower known as Sanjeevani (it roughly translates to "Bloom of Eternal Life"). Hanuman, being the loyal friend that he is, goes to get it from the mountain it grows on. When he sees that the flower is growing all over the mountain, he picks up the entire mountain and flies back so that the entire army can be healed from it. Alternately, he cannot tell the correct herb and carries it back to the experts who can.
  • In Slavic and Baltic folklore, the mythical "fern flower" blooms once a year on Midsummer's Eve. What it actually does depends on the culture.
  • One fairy tale has a prince be fated to have attempts on his life made by a snake, an alligator, and a dog. His wife saves him from all three. With the alligator, it tells him that unless he can fill a pit of sand with water and keep it filled, it will kill him. His wife recalls being told about a four-leaved flower on the top of a mountain in the middle of a desert which can do just that. She goes by herself and procures it for him.
  • Korean Mythology features Seocheon Flower Field, a magical flower field located in the netherworld (or, in the border between this world and the other world). Going there can take years (unless you have some divine help), but it's all worth trying because there grow flowers that can raise the dead (other flowers include murder flower, a flower which makes the viewer die on the spot). Characters including Bari-degi and Hanllakgungi went to the field to revive their dead parents.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In a Dragon article about dream magic, it's advised that the unique material components required (dreamwillow bark and blue lotus flowers) are very rare, to balance the power of dream spells. One specific suggestion is that in the Forgotten Realms setting, the blue lotus blooms once a year, in the highest mountains of Tabot.
  • In Mahjong, calling a kong and drawing one's hand-winning tile as the replacement is referred to as "Flower on the Mountan".

    Video Games 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: In one side-mission, a little girl in Skopp City asks Ann to search for a Hyacinth flower located somewhere at Freeway 42 that would help her father recover.
  • Avalon (1998): You have to retrieve the "Flower of the Eternal Roam" from a mountaintop in order for your ally Caddman to brew the antidote to the Dark Poison, so Esor Amreh can't use it on you again.
  • Brave Fencer Musashi: Misteria, one of the two ingredients needed to treat Tim during Chapter 3, inverts this, being a magic flower that only blooms between certain times and can be found on a rock formation in the Mine's Underground Lake. The other ingredient, Aqualin, does reside atop Twinpeak Mountain, but is simply mineral water with restorative properties.
  • The quest for the Shield Card in SaGa Frontier has you going to Mosperiburg for one of these. According to supplementary materials, it's because Fuse is in love with the receptionist at IRPO.
  • In Breath of Fire II, you need to get a mushroom to perform a spell that lets you enter the body of a cursed queen. It also has to be a very specific mushroom, which is a problem because the mountaintop is full of very similar looking mushrooms.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Inversed in Final Fantasy IV. To cure Rosa's poison you need to descend into the lair of the antlion to get an Antlion Pearl.
    • Final Fantasy V does this twice. With the same species of creature, the same plant required to save its life, and the same girl willingly poisoning herself to save it.
  • Star Ocean series practically makes it its tradition.
    • The original Star Ocean: Fantastic Space Odyssey subverts it, where our heroes, having been living on a normal fantasy world, have to obtain the flower to cure a plague which is turning people into stone/crystals. However, as soon as you get there, an exploration team from the starship above beams down, hears your story and takes you back to the ship to get an actual cure. It doesn't work, but this does eventually cause you to wind up saving everyone in the world, and the galaxy.
    • Star Ocean: The Second Story:
      • There's a sick little girl whom you can get Private Actions with (along with another character— who it is depends on who you're playing as and who you have in your party), and in some of them you go on a journey to the Lassguss Mountains to get a plant to cure her.
      • It happens again when Bowman makes you venture into the annoying Sanctuary of Linga to find a herb he has never seen before. There's no pressing reason for this, he just wants to see if your braggadocio is legit.
    • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: Ameena, the ill girl you befriend, is making a wishing charm out of a rare flower, which grows only in the wilderness area around the town where you meet her. It doesn't appear to be anything more than an inconvenience for most people to find it, but she's in such poor health that it nearly kills her.
    • Star Ocean: The Divine Force once againg makes the party venture on a mountain in order to find a rare herb for use in a medicine. This time, it turns out to be the real cure, but another complication arises - the herb is being systematically destroyed by the group that spreads the disease in the first place. The party manages to find only a small patch preserved for research. Luckily, it turns out to be enough.
  • Kingdom of Loathing had a limited time event where you could catch a plague. One of the ingredients for a temporary cure was a "Blood Flower" that grew at the peak of Mount McLarge Huge, at the site of a battle where Yeti and Mafia Penguins killed each other. You consider "leaving it there, as a touching testament to the futility of war, but then your avarice kicks in and you pick it."
  • In the opening for Monster Rancher 4, the hero and his monster buddies go on a quest for one of these for Rio.
  • In Exile III / Avernum III, you have to fetch the most beautiful flower in the world for a faerie. It's deep in a mountain valley full of increasingly pretty meadows of flowers, each guarded by even huger hoards of gremlins that use the "Charm Person" spell.
  • In Trials of Mana, you go get flowers from a mountaintop... but when you arrive you make it so your wind spirit blows them toward a castle you are about to invade. Said flowers act like a sleeping gas.
  • In Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, one minor quest has Delsus' grandmother tell you she wants a white flower, which you will, of course, discover can be found on top of a mountain (in highlands on top, actually, not on a peak). It's played fairly straight.
  • This happens in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals as part of a Continuity Nod towards the first game, concerning the origin of the flower called Priphea.
  • Potentially happens twice in Tales of Symphonia. The Elven Storyteller requires you to get the Mana Leaf Herb from "a difficult place" in order to cure Colette's illness, and there's also a Sidequest in which Raine falls ill, and everyone splits up to find a way to cure her. Her brother Genis and his friend Mithos find the required flower at the top of the Fooji Mountains.
  • The only wolfsbane flower in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind expansion Bloodmoon is located on top of a large mountain in Solstheim. The original Morrowind has a more downplayed version — one sidequest asks you to find five (extremely rare) Roland's Tear flowers, and the quest-giver knows of one place where they grow. The good news is, it's not exactly inaccessible — it's actually fairly close. The bad news is that it is a Daedric ruin, and Daedric ruins have a reputation as some of the most dangerous places in all Morrowind.
  • Little Big Adventure 2 has Twinsen needing to find a Balsam flower in order to pass his wizard exam.
  • Done in Dragon Quest Monsters 2 in order to awaken a queen from an endless nightmare.
  • One mission in Tomba! requires the eponymous hero to go get healing herbs from a very windy mountain in order to save injured puppy Baron.
  • The quest Troll Romance in RuneScape requires you to get an extremely rare flower called Trollweiss from the top of a mountain, so that a troll can give it to a female troll... as a snack.
  • Story of Seasons:
    • One of the side quests in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town involves getting Ellen a rare flower that only blooms on the top of Mt. Moon at midnight.
    • A similar premise is used in Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, in which the town's traditional means of proposing involves a person climbing a mountain and finding a blue feather that is dropped by a bird that flies over there. Your character must do this in order to marry any love interest with the required number of hearts.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman convinces Poison Ivy to tell him where to find a plant capable of counteracting the Titan formula claiming that all plants on the island will be destroyed if she doesn't help him. Ivy agrees and informs Batman that the plant he seeks...is in Killer Croc's lair.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Marcus tells Lilina in their supports that Roy's dad Eliwood did this when he was young, to please his now-deceased wife aka Roy's Missing Mom who can be either Lyndis, Ninian or Fiora. (Though the talk implies said mom isn't Lyndis, as out of the three ladies she's the only one who is NOT from the zone the flower grows in.
      Marcus: Lord Eliwood loved his wife deeply. And one night...before the two became engaged, Lord Eliwood suddenly disappeared from the castle. When he returned to his love three days later, he presented her with a beautiful white flower which only grows in the snowy highlands. It was the flower which she loved the most.
    • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, a Male Morgan can do this for Nah in their supports, as the dragon goddess Naga requires it for a ritual that she asks the half-Dragon Nah for. If they reach S support, it turns out it was a plot by Naga to prove to Nah that her prayers for Morgan to love her wasn't necessary, because he already loved her.
  • One side quest in Wizardry VII involves collecting five flowers like this.
  • Brave Soul: The main character undertakes the quest to acquire a special herb for the local hospital as part of his guild's charity program, so he doesn't have to wash laundry instead.
  • In The Dog Island once Dr. Potan's herb remedy fails, the Player must find the legendary flower to save their sibling from a elusive and deadly disease.
  • In Holy Umbrella, a rare fruit known as the iceapple, which happens to be the only known cure for petrification, was rendered almost extinct by overharvesting, and the only place where it is still believed to grow is at the remote peak of Mt. Apex.
  • In Paper Mario: Color Splash's Piper sidequest, one has to find the Rainbow Carnation to heal a wilting tree, and such flowers only grows in high places. Piper's Toad friends are seen climbing up the Marmalade Valley moutains to get it and revive the tree.
  • In Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, for the second quest, Pac-Man must get Lucy one of these for her birthday.

    Web Animation 
  • Coach Z suggests this trope to Homestar in the Homestar Runner movie "In Search of the Yello Dello". Of course, this being Homestar Runner, The Yello Dello isn't really a flower but a bird with human legs.

    Western Animation 
  • In an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, as a romantic gesture, Aang goes to get one that only grow on the volcano rim.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): In "The Bitter Rose", Orko does this to prove his love for Dree'Elle. Initially it causes problems for everyone until it's revealed he did something unexpectedly beneficial, after all.
  • In one episode of Kaeloo, Kaeloo sets up a game show-like experience for her friends. Sadly, she can't actually make anything dangerous, and the flower is on a rock which the others are forced to pretend is a mountaintop..
  • An episode of Kim Possible had sidekick Ron Stoppable trekking into an Amazon valley to find an orchid that could cure Kim of a poison that made her disappear when she got embarrassed.
  • The High Wattleflower in Kulipari: An Army of Frogs grows at the top of a mountain frogs die trying to climb and is an essential part of battlefield medicine, being "biological and magical". It was also used to create the Veil around the Amphibilands, and can therefore be used by the villains to destroy it.
  • Po and Monkey in Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness enter the Valley of the Scorpion to obtain an orchid which can cure Tigress of river fever.
  • In The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists, Littlefoot has to go to the dangerous "Land of the Mists" to retrieve the nightflower to heal his sick grandfather.
  • In one episode of Maryoku Yummy, Maryoku tells the wishes a story about The Golden Flower of Fun, that supposedly grows in a cave and brings happiness to whoever finds it. Fudan decides to go find it, so to dissuade him from making the long journey (and after a confusing conversation with Tapo Tapo), Maryoku goes off to find it herself. She eventually stumbles upon it, but leaves it where it is when she sees a record of the Yummies who had been there before.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Three's a Crowd", Twilight and Cadance travel to a hill at the edge of Equestria, to find a rare flower to cure Discord. He "forgot" to mention that the flower is the size of a tree. And seemed to be genuinely unaware it was guarded by a Sand Worm. And in fact, he was never even really sick (not until the worm sprays him).
  • In the "Game of Peril" episode of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Penelope's scavenger hunt list includes a rare flower called the "Crimson Avuncular", which grows only on Mount Mishmash.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars has this, though it's not so much as "flower from the mountaintop" as it is "root from the canyon on another planet".
  • In The Pirates of Dark Water, one of the Thirteen Treasures of Rule is guarded by a giant worm. A nearby alchemist tells Ren that a certain magical flower with healing powers that grows deep in a dangerous marsh is poisonous to the worm. In the end, Ren uses the flower to save the life of someone he befriended in that episode. Said friend repays the favor by distracting the worm while Ren claims the Treasure.
  • Sofia the First: In the episode "Enchanted Science Fair", Amber accidentally overuses the Hocus Crocus for her group's project, destroying her own project as well as those of her siblings. When the children visit Cedric the Sorcerer again to restock on ingredients so they can try again, he tells them he's all out of Hocus Crocus and that the only place to get the flower is at the top of Mist Bowl Mountain, but there is enough for only one of their projects. Much of the ensuing episode is then dedicated to them trying to obtain the flower.
  • The Smurfs (1981): This was the plot of a Smurfs short; subverted at the end when we find out that there are actually hundreds of the flowers growing up there.

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