In a show that has Talking Animals or Funny Animals, with the animal characters mainly being mice, birds, lizards, insects, etc., sometimes you can expect there to be a body of water like rivers, lakes or ponds as the setting. The best way for these animals to have transportation is to use a leaf as a boat in order to travel from place to place.
This is a trope in which an animal character will use a leaf as a boat. It may be a tiny character in a regular-sized leaf, or a human-sized character in a huge leaf from a fictional plant. It can also be used in fairy tales as well as being a common motif in any tale or art to do with little people like fey or fairies.
Often seen in Mouse World settings.
If the traveller is a tiny fairy or a Living Toy, the boat can be powered by cute little animals like butterflies, small birds or fish.
Closely related to Lily-Pad Platform. See also Tree Vessel.
Examples:
- Anpanman: Peter's mode of traveling.
- One Piece: One of Ussop's many plant based tools after the two year time skip is Boaty Banana, which produces a giant canoe shaped banana.
- In Mouse Guard, Sadie uses one to travel to Calogero.
- Hans Christian Andersen's "Thumbelina" is the Ur-Example. She escapes from the Toad and her son on a leaf boat, floating down a stream. Her boat is pulled by a butterfly for some time.
- The Rescuers: Bernard and Bianca use a large leaf propelled by Evinrude the dragonfly in order to find and rescue Penny.
- This was used once in Antz.
- In Fun and Fancy Free, Mickey, Donald and Goofy cross the giant's moat on a giant leaf. Jiminy Cricket also uses one in the introduction.
- Woodstock had one in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.
- In The Princess and the Frog, Ray goes out on the bayou in one of these during his funeral.
- In Cat City, Lazy Dick makes one for himself to ride a river in The Amazon Rainforest.
- FernGully: The Last Rainforest: Zak and Crysta ride in a canoe shaped leaf boat at one point.
- The elven boats in The Lord of the Rings, while not literally made of leaves, use this as a visual motif.
- In Tad Williams' Otherland series, the heroes' boat turns into a leaf when they travel into a simulation in which they're smaller than the local insects.
- Star Wars Legends: In Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Luke and Princess Leia are traveling underground on Mimban and need to cross a large underground lake. Fortunately, there are some lily-pad-like plants growing in the lake, with leaves several feet across. Luke uses his lightsaber to cut one from its stem, and they cross the lake using the lily pad as a raft.
- The tile character of The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher uses a lily leaf as a boat while fishing.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: While Link is tiny, he can go on top of a leaf and use his Gust Jar to propel himself across the body of water.
- Dark Cloud: Used in The Lost Woods dungeon to go to a hidden bonus dungeon.
- Simon the Sorcerer: One puzzle requires the protagonist to improvise one of these after being shrunk.
- Legends & Myths: One shows up towards the end of the City of Eyes level. If you click on it, it grows swan-like wings and sails away, only for another to replace it. It doesn't serve any purpose, but it's pretty.
- Clumsy uses a leaf boat in The Smurfs cartoon special "Smurfily Ever After" to deliver invitations for Woody and Laconia's wedding, with his first stop being the Pussywillow Pixies.
- Some types of Ants use leaves to cross streams.
- Water striders are predatory insects that "walk" on the surface-tension of still ponds. When they find a dead or drowning bug, they'll drag it to a floating leaf, so they can eat in peace without the risk of being swallowed by a fish from below. Occasionally the leaf then gets washed into a stream and carried off, which is one way water striders colonize new ponds.
