Plants with flying bugs/plant ticking

I was wondering if there is any way to recreate the way the new firefly bush works in a mod. From what I know, since plants don't update every tick, there is no way to recreate the same effect as accurately as possible. Maybe there is a way, but I can't find it, and I want to avoid making the plant a block, as that is not what I am wanting. This is also somewhat of a feature request to add an option to update plants every tick like other blocks.