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Plants Word Search

This plants word search hides words like root, stem, leaf to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy plants vocabulary activity.

10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

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Tap the first and last letter of a word — or use arrow keys and Enter. Dragging works too.

SAPLING
POLLEN
NECTAR
CACTUS
BAMBOO
SPROUT
ROOT
STEM
LEAF
BARK

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

Seven trees in a city park

Nairobi, Kenya

On World Environment Day in June 1977, a small procession walked out of a conference centre in downtown Nairobi and kept going to Kamukunji Park on the edge of the city. There they planted seven trees, one for each of several historical community leaders. It was an unremarkable morning, and it was the first act of the Green Belt Movement, founded by the Kenyan scientist Wangari Maathai. Her idea was plain: give ordinary women seedlings, and let them replant the country themselves. It grew into a movement across Africa. In 2004 Maathai became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for work that began with seven trees in a park.

A flower out of the ice

Kolyma River, Russia

Under the Kolyma River lowlands of northeastern Siberia, 38 metres down in permafrost that has never thawed, lie the burrows of Ice Age ground squirrels. The animals packed them with fruits and seeds, and those stores were never eaten. In 2012 a Russian team reported what they had done with three of those tiny fruits. Radiocarbon dating put them at 31,800 years old. Working with placental tissue from inside the immature fruits, the researchers coaxed out shoots, rooted them, and grew whole plants of Silene stenophylla, a small white narrow-leafed campion. The plants flowered. Then they set seed, and the seeds sprouted, closing a gap of more than thirty thousand years.

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Did you know?

root: In 1974 a shepherd's tree in the Kalahari was found with roots 68 metres down, the deepest ever recorded.
stem: Nothing pumps water up a stem. Evaporation from the leaves pulls it, and can lift water a hundred metres.
leaf: The raffia palm grows the largest leaves on Earth. One measured frond ran 25.91 metres from tip to base.
bark: Cork is the bark of the cork oak. It regrows after stripping, and law forbids restripping a tree within nine years.
pollen: Pollen walls are built of sporopollenin, called the toughest material in the plant kingdom. Grains survive for thousands of years.
nectar: Some plants make nectar outside their flowers, in extrafloral nectaries, to pay ants to patrol the leaves as bodyguards.
cactus: A saguaro's pleats open like an accordion after rain, and a big one can weigh 80 pounds per foot of trunk.
bamboo: Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on record. Some species have been measured growing 91 centimetres in a single day.
sapling: About 500 tree seeds orbited the Moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. Over 400 saplings grew from them back home.
sprout: Raw bamboo shoots carry natural cyanide compounds. Thorough boiling destroys them, which is why cooks always boil the sprouts first.
trunk: The General Sherman sequoia is the largest tree on Earth by volume, roughly 52,500 cubic feet of trunk and limbs.
moss: Mosses have no true roots. They drink through their leaves, and many revive within hours of rain after drying out.
chlorophyll: Chlorophyll and the heme in your blood share nearly the same ring. Chlorophyll holds magnesium where heme holds iron.
photosynthesis: Photosynthesis remade the sky. Cyanobacteria released oxygen until, about 2.4 billion years ago, it finally began building up in the air.
fern: Ferns have no seeds and no flowers. They spread by spores, and fern-like fossils go back about 390 million years.

Trivia

What gas do plants release into the air as a by-product of photosynthesis?
Oxygen.
Ferns make no seeds and no flowers. What do they scatter instead in order to reproduce?
Spores.
Which plant holds the record for fastest growth, measured at up to 91 centimetres in a single day?
Bamboo.
Cork comes from the bark of which tree, which by law cannot be stripped more often than every nine years?
The cork oak.
Which giant sequoia in California is the largest tree on Earth by volume?
The General Sherman Tree.

Trivia · 1 / 5

What gas do plants release into the air as a by-product of photosynthesis?

Oxygen.

In their words

Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
Henry David Thoreau

And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is this plants word search free to print?

This plants word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like SAPLING, POLLEN, NECTAR hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.

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