A forest of trees in one grid
Trees are the giants of the natural world, and this word search plants a whole woodland. You'll be finding the familiar broadleaves — OAK, MAPLE and BIRCH — the evergreens like PINE and SPRUCE, and a few record-breakers, from the towering REDWOOD to the sun-loving PALM.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the woodland changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a denser forest once the diagonals and backwards words appear on Hard.
Broadleaves and evergreens
The grid mixes the two great families of tree. There are the broadleaves that drop their leaves in autumn — the OAK, MAPLE, BIRCH, BEECH, ELM, ASH, WILLOW, POPLAR, ASPEN, SYCAMORE, CHESTNUT, WALNUT, HAZEL, HAWTHORN and ROWAN — and the evergreens that stay green all winter: the PINE, SPRUCE, FIR, CEDAR, CYPRESS, JUNIPER and prickly HOLLY. Towering over them all is the giant REDWOOD, with the PALM soaking up the sun.
The planet's oldest, tallest living things
Trees hold some of nature's greatest records. The REDWOODS of California are the tallest living things on Earth, growing higher than a 30-storey building, and some bristlecone pines are nearly 5,000 years old — alive since before the pyramids were built. A single big OAK can be home to hundreds of different creatures and drop thousands of acorns in a year, each one a chance at a new tree.
Trees are also quietly keeping us alive. Through their leaves they breathe in the carbon dioxide we breathe out and release the oxygen we need, while their roots hold the soil together and their shade cools the land. You can even read a tree's life story: cut through a trunk and you'll see growth rings, one for each year, fatter in good summers and thinner in hard ones. All this makes trees a rich nature-study topic — pair it with leaf-spotting on an autumn walk, when the broadleaves blaze red and gold before they fall.
Great for a nature topic
Trees link to leaf ID, the seasons and woodland habitats — Easy mode uses a small grid with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use Make Your Own to build a grid from the trees near you.