Fire Flower

Fire Flowers are power-ups that can be found in the Super Mario Bros. franchise, first appearing in Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. When collected, they usually give the player the ability to throw fireballs that can hurt enemies and destroy some objects. They have had several variants, such as an Ice Flower that can freeze enemies, a Boomerang Flower that allows the player to throw boomerangs, a Cloud Flower that can create clouds, and several others.

Super Mario 64 Manifestation
Fire Flowers can be found in Super Mario 64 due to the Personalization A.I., as they are not in standard copies. They function similar to other caps, being able to be found in boxes and then collected to obtain the power-up. However, they usually do not manifest as caps, though it has been reported.

Fire Flowers are most commonly found in the 2 snow levels, Cool, Cool Mountain and Snowman's Land, as well as anomalous snow courses, such as Chroma Tundra and Cold, Cold, Crevasse. They usually function the same as their appearances in other games, allowing Mario to throw fireballs, most commonly by pressing the B Button. These fireballs have been reported to melt ice, which is why they usually appear in snow levels. This usually means that Dynamic Level Rearrangement must occur to place more ice throughout the levels.

Several reports claim that the Fire Flowers can have other uses, such as lighting torches and lamps in dark areas such as Big Boo's Haunt, and igniting the toxic fumes in Hazy Maze Cave. Some stars can also be reworked by the Personalization A.I. to require the usage of the Fire Flowers.

Variants of the Fire Flower have also been reported, such as the Ice Flower, which usually has the opposite uses such as freezing lava in levels such as Lethal Lava Land, or putting out fire in various levels. Other variants such as the Cloud Flower have also been reported, with their corresponding uses.

Reports
THESE REPORTS ARE UNVERIFIED, AND SHOULD BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.

Report 1
"I was playing my copy of the game, and I eventually saw a weird orange box appear in Hazy Maze Cave, near the start of the level. I hit it, and a fire flower appeared. It only lasted for a bit, but the box kept respawning. I saw some torches out, and the level, outside of the starting room, was darker than normal, to the point of nearly being impossible to see... without the fire flower, which lights things up. I got the rolling rocks star, then went to the metal cap cavern, where another orange block was added as well!

I think there were multiple in the 2 levels outside of the starting areas.

Another star was added, which required me to set 5 torches on fire in the metal cap cavern. It acted like the 5 secrets.

Later, after beating the game, I went to the roof (I needed 121 stars now, due to the extra star that was added) and spoke to Yoshi. I saw, you guessed it, another orange block. I got the enhanced triple jump, and when I used the fire flower and triple jumped, I automatically shot a fireball at the peak of the jump, and shot another when I bounced."

Trivia & Notes

 * A power-up similar to the Fire Flower can be found in Super Mario 64 DS. When Yoshi collects the Power Flower, they obtain the ability to emit fire from their mouth.
 * Fire Flowers usually do not have a corresponding cap switch stage, instead being a "starting power-up".
 * It is believed that Fire Flowers are remnants of an earlier build of Super Mario 64 that had power-ups from previous games, before they were later replaced by caps.