Forest Word Search

The trees, plants and animals of a temperate forest on one sheet, with its answer key.

Name Date

Forest Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

MAAHZLOGDTOYHHA

COMOPGHTMDWIZDN

NWMAPLEIELLEXEG

PAFKIMMRRGBBLES

YCORWOODPECKERR

YXFAHNSTZYPIDRN

ATOCOKSBTACORNS

TORCRCTIMBERNAP

SHEONOMYLARWILI

SHSOSQOOCAPRISF

GOTNLOBOSPFCETE

ESSMYATATICKNUR

TSWZGERCANOPYMN

OMJLOTGFOEDLRPM

JTNNOTYITRAILOR

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

OakOAK
MapleMAPLE
PinePINE
AcornACORN
FernFERN
MossMOSS
DeerDEER
OwlOWL
RaccoonRACCOON
WoodpeckerWOODPECKER
CanopyCANOPY
LogLOG
StumpSTUMP
TrailTRAIL
ForestFOREST
TimberTIMBER

16 of 22 words from the Forest Favorites list.

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Word list

Large print Lower-case letters Name and date line on paper

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Answer key: Forest Word Search

MAAHZLOGDTOYHHA

COMOPGHTMDWIZDN

NWMAPLEIELLEXEG

PAFKIMMRRGBBLES

YCORWOODPECKERR

YXFAHNSTZYPIDRN

ATOCOKSBTACORNS

TORCRCTIMBERNAP

SHEONOMYLARWILI

SHSOSQOOCAPRISF

GOTNLOBOSPFCETE

ESSMYATATICKNUR

TSWZGERCANOPYMN

OMJLOTGFOEDLRPM

JTNNOTYITRAILOR

OAK, MAPLE, PINE, ACORN, FERN, MOSS, DEER, OWL, RACCOON, WOODPECKER, CANOPY, LOG, STUMP, TRAIL, FOREST, TIMBER

Next step Make a puzzle from the woods near your school Scramble the same forest words

All 96 words

Forest Trees 16

Acorn An oak's nut, borne in a cup; inside, as a rule, is one seedling.
Beech A deciduous tree of temperate Eurasia and North America, in the same family as the oaks.
Birch A thin-leaved deciduous hardwood, in the same family as the alders, hazels and hornbeams.
Black Locust A medium-sized hardwood tree of the legume family, also called false acacia.
Cottonwood One of three kinds of poplar; they grow wild in North America, Europe and western Asia.
Dogwood A flowering tree that grows wild from eastern North America to northern Mexico.
Hazel A deciduous tree or large shrub of the temperate Northern Hemisphere, usually placed in the birch family.
Hornbeam A hardwood tree of the birch family, found across much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere.
Maple A tree of the genus Acer, which holds about 132 species, most of them native to East Asia.
Oak A hardwood tree of the beech family; its leaves often have lobed edges and its nut sits in a cup.
Pawpaw A small deciduous tree of eastern North America with big leaves and a large fruit, yellowish-green to brown.
Pine A conifer with needles in bunches, usually of 2 to 5, and seeds carried on woody cones.
Poplar A deciduous tree of the genus Populus, which holds over 60 species.
Redbud A small tree or big shrub of eastern North America that drops its leaves each year.
Sweetgum A deciduous tree native to the warm temperate parts of eastern North America.
Tulip Tree The North American member of a genus of only two species, also called the yellow poplar.

Show all 96 words (80 more)

Forest Plants and Fungi 23

Bluebell A perennial that grows from a bulb, found on the Atlantic side of Europe as far as the British Isles.
Bracken A large, coarse fern with highly divided fronds, found on every continent except Antarctica.
Bramble A plant of the rose family; raspberries and blackberries are fruits of this group.
Chanterelle An orange, yellow or white fungus that is meaty and funnel-shaped.
Fern A plant that reproduces by spores and has neither seeds nor flowers.
Fiddlehead The furled young frond of a fern; left on the plant, it would unroll into a new frond.
Horsetail A plant that reproduces by spores rather than seeds, the only living genus in its family.
Huckleberry In North America, the name of several plants of the family Ericaceae.
Ivy An evergreen woody plant that climbs or creeps over the ground.
Lichen A partnership of algae or cyanobacteria living among the threads of fungi.
Mayapple A North American perennial also called wild mandrake or ground lemon.
Morel A fungus with a honeycomb look, from its network of ridges and pits.
Moss A small plant with no flowers that tends to grow in thick green mats or clumps where it is damp or shady.
Mushroom The fleshy part of a fungus that bears its spores and usually comes up above the ground.
Mycelium The root-like part of a fungus, a mass of branching threads.
Nettle A perennial flowering plant known for its sting; one of its common names is stinger.
Puffball A fungus with a ball-shaped fruiting body that bursts when mature and lets out a cloud of dust-like spores.
Shrub A small to medium-sized woody plant with several stems, also called a bush.
Toadstool A name that generally refers to a poisonous mushroom.
Trillium A flowering plant of temperate regions, also called wakerobin; there are about fifty species.
Truffle The fruiting body of a fungus that grows underground.
Turkey Tail A common mushroom found throughout the world, named after the fan of feathers that its shape resembles.
Violet A flowering plant of the genus Viola, which holds over 680 species.

Forest Animals 25

Badger A medium-sized, short-legged omnivore with a squat body suited to digging.
Black Bear A medium-sized omnivore found only in North America, the smallest and most widespread of its kind there.
Blue Jay A songbird of the crow family, native to eastern North America.
Box Turtle A land-living shelled reptile; some kinds are Asian and some are North American.
Chipmunk A small, striped, burrowing squirrel; every kind but one is found in North America.
Deer A hoofed, cud-chewing mammal of the family Cervidae.
Dormouse A nocturnal rodent of Africa, Asia and Europe, named for its long, dormant hibernation.
Fox The red kind is the largest of its group and lives across the entire Northern Hemisphere.
Moose The tallest, largest and heaviest living species of deer in the world.
Nuthatch A small bird with a large head, a short tail and a powerful bill and feet.
Opossum The Virginia kind lives from southern Canada to northern Costa Rica and is the northernmost marsupial in the world.
Owl A mostly solitary bird of prey, active at night, with a large, broad head and sharp talons.
Porcupine A large rodent covered in quills; the North American kind is the continent's second-largest rodent, after the beaver.
Raccoon A mammal native to North America, the largest of the procyonid family.
Salamander An amphibian that looks like a lizard, with a slender body, a blunt snout and a tail at every age.
Skunk A New World mammal known for the strong, unpleasant-smelling liquid it can spray.
Squirrel A small or medium-sized rodent; its family holds tree, ground and flying kinds.
Stag Beetle An insect of the family Lucanidae, which holds about 1,200 species.
Thrush The wood kind is a North American songbird closely related to the American robin.
Tree Frog An amphibian that spends a major part of its life up among the branches.
Weasel A small, active predator with a long, slender body and short legs.
Wild Boar A pig whose home range covers much of Eurasia and North Africa; people took it to the Americas and Oceania.
Wild Turkey A North American upland game bird, the ancestor of the farm bird of the same name.
Wolf A wild canine of Eurasia and North America; the dog is one of its more than thirty subspecies.
Woodpecker A bird of the family Picidae, which also holds the sapsuckers and wrynecks.

From Canopy to Forest Floor 16

Canopy The upper layer of a forest, formed by the crowns of mature trees.
Clearing An open area within a forest, also called a glade.
Creek In North America, a stream smaller than a river.
Deadwood Dead branches, or the wood of dead trees.
Glade An open area within a forest, often a grassy meadow.
Hollow A natural cavity in the trunk or a branch of a tree, found mainly in old trees.
Humus The stable organic matter in soil that comes from the decomposition of plants and animals.
Leaf Litter Dead leaves, bark, twigs and other plant matter lying on the top layer of the soil.
Log A fallen dead tree, or what remains of a large branch, lying on the ground.
Sapling A young tree, but bigger than a seedling.
Snag A dead or dying tree that still stands, often without its top or most of its small branches.
Stump What is left of a trunk, roots and all, once a tree has been felled or has come down.
Thicket A very thick stand of tall shrubs or trees, often of just one or a few species.
Trail A path or track through a natural area, for walkers, riders and others without motors.
Undergrowth Another name for the plants that grow beneath the forest canopy; also called underbrush.
Understory The plant life that grows beneath the forest canopy without reaching up into it.

How a Forest Lives 16

Coppice To cut a tree down to a stump so that new shoots grow from it, a traditional way of managing woodland.
Decay The breaking down of dead matter into simpler substances, a part of the nutrient cycle.
Deciduous Describes trees and shrubs that shed their leaves each year, usually in the autumn.
Decomposer A living thing that breaks down dead organisms and releases their nutrients.
Dormant In a resting state: growth and development stop for a time, which saves energy.
Firewood Wood burned as fuel, still recognizable as a log or a branch.
Forest An ecosystem marked by a dense community of trees.
Hibernate To pass a season in a state of minimal activity, with a low body temperature and slow breathing and heart rate.
Maple Syrup A sweet food made from sap that rises in certain trees in late winter and early spring.
Mast Year A season in which the trees of a forest bear a very heavy crop of nuts.
Nurse Log A fallen tree that helps seedlings to grow as it rots away.
Old Growth Describes a forest that has grown for a long time with no disturbance.
Ranger A person whose job is to protect and look after parks and other protected areas.
Temperate Describes the climates of the middle latitudes, between the tropics and the polar regions.
Timber In the United States, cut logs or standing trees not yet sawn; in the United Kingdom, wood sawn into beams and boards.
Wildfire A fire in vegetation that nobody planned and nobody controls; some natural forests depend on it.

How this list was compiled: 96 words of a temperate forest in five lists: trees, plants and fungi, animals, the forest from canopy to floor, and how a forest lives. Facts in the clues were checked on October 9, 2026 against each word's English Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0); spellings and plain meanings against English Wiktionary. Licence: own work

How it works

This forest word search opens on 16 words of a temperate forest: Oak, Maple and Pine with the Acorn, Fern and Moss, Deer and Owl, and the Canopy overhead. Five lists hold 96 words, from trees to the forest year.

Read the full guide

Printable word search: forest trees, plants and fungi

Forest Trees has 16 names, among them Beech, Hornbeam and Tulip Tree. Oak, maple and beech are typical trees of the deciduous forests of the Northern Hemisphere. Forest Plants and Fungi has 23 words, from Fern, Moss and Lichen to Chanterelle, Morel and Puffball.

Animals, layers and the forest year

Forest Animals has 25, from Deer, Owl and Fox to Salamander and Stag Beetle. From Canopy to Forest Floor has 16, such as Understory, Leaf Litter and Snag, a dead tree that still stands. How a Forest Lives adds 16, with Deciduous, Hibernate, Decomposer and Mast Year.

Younger pupils can start with Easy Forest: Oak, Fern, Moss, Deer, Owl and 21 more short words.
Show clues, not words (in More options) turns Deer into "A hoofed, cud-chewing mammal of the family Cervidae."

Questions and answers

What are the layers of a forest?

From the ground up: the forest floor, with its root and moss layers, then the herb layer, the shrub layer, the understory and the canopy. The canopy is the upper layer, formed by the crowns of mature trees.

What animals live in a temperate forest?

Forest Animals lists 25, among them Deer, Black Bear, Raccoon, Chipmunk, Woodpecker, Wild Turkey, Salamander and Box Turtle. They do not all share one forest: the Dormouse lives in Africa, Asia and Europe, the Raccoon in North America.

What is a deciduous forest?

A temperate forest made up mostly of trees that lose their leaves each winter. It grows where summers are warm and moist and winters are cold, with large regions in eastern North America, East Asia and Europe.

Does the forest word search come with an answer key?

Yes. The key is the second printed page: the same grid with the words ringed. Puzzle and key each fill one sheet of Letter or A4.

All 96 words

Forest Trees 16

Forest Plants and Fungi 23

Forest Animals 25

From Canopy to Forest Floor 16

How a Forest Lives 16

How it works

Printable word search: forest trees, plants and fungi

Animals, layers and the forest year

Questions and answers

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