Trees and Forest Plants Word Search

About this puzzle

This list moves from the tops of the trees down to the forest floor: tall conifers such as pine, spruce, cedar and redwood; broadleaf trees like oak, maple, birch, willow and magnolia; and the smaller plants below — ferns, moss and ivy. It opens on Hard, partly because so many of the words are short (OAK, IVY, PINE, FERN, MOSS, BARK), which makes them easy to miss among the filler letters.

The default layout is Hard on a 15×15 grid. Easy, Medium and Hard each use their own checked layout of the same words, and every one can be printed in standard or large print on US Letter or A4.

Word notes

Maple

Sap from sugar maples is boiled down to make maple syrup — roughly forty parts of sap for one part of syrup.

Birch

Many birches have pale, papery bark that peels away in thin layers.

Willow

Willows grow well near water; their bark contains salicin, a compound related to aspirin.

Spruce

An evergreen conifer whose short, sharp needles grow one at a time from small pegs on the twig.

Moss

A small, non-flowering plant that spreads by spores and grows best in damp, shady places.

Acorn

The nut of an oak tree.

Sapling

A young tree.

Redwood

Coast redwoods in California include the tallest living trees on Earth.

Try this after the puzzle

Take the list outside: a park or schoolyard often has three or four of these trees. Collect a fallen leaf, needle or seed from each, then match them to the words. Indoors, sort the list into evergreen trees, trees that lose their leaves, and plants of the forest floor.

All 15 words

Oak · Maple · Birch · Willow · Cedar · Pine · Spruce · Fern · Moss · Acorn · Sapling · Bark · Ivy · Redwood · Magnolia