About Flowerdle

Flowerdle is a nature game for children aged 3 to 6. Three flowers appear down the left side. Three leaves appear down the right side. Your child drags each flower across to its matching leaf — that’s the whole game. Get all three right, the round ends with a small celebration and a star, and three brand-new plants appear.

Flowerdle joins Fredle, the Sumdle family, and Flagle in the Tadpole Games collection. Where Flagle teaches the world through landmarks, Flowerdle teaches the garden through real plant photos. It’s designed to be played before a child can read.

Who Flowerdle is for

• Toddlers and preschoolers (age 3–4) — old enough to drag a finger across a screen, young enough that picture-only is a relief.
• Reception (age 4–5) — building a vocabulary of everyday plants. Drag, hear the grown-up say the name, learn that a tulip has a long thin leaf and a dandelion has a jagged one.
• Year 1 (age 5–6) — deepening the same knowledge with rarer plants like foxglove, snowdrop, and iris.
• Home-schoolers, grandparents on FaceTime, anyone who wants a gentle five-minute screen routine that quietly teaches something.

How it works

• Three photos of flowers sit down the left side of the screen.
• Three photos of leaves sit down the right side — one leaf for each flower, but in a random order.
• Your child drags from a flower across to its leaf. (Or from a leaf back to its flower — both directions work.)
• Right answer? A green line connects the pair, the plant’s name pops up — “Tulip!”, “Sunflower!”, “Dandelion!” — and a tick appears.
• Wrong answer? The card gives a gentle wobble. Nothing is lost. They can try again.
• Match all three, earn a star, and three fresh plants appear.

Why pictures, not words

Three-year-olds can’t read “tulip”, but they can absolutely recognise one. Flowerdle is built around that fact. The puzzle is always picture-to-picture: a real flower photo on the left, a real leaf photo on the right, and a finger drawing the line between them. The name only appears once they’ve made the match — rewarded for the noticing, not gated by the reading.

That ordering matters. Picture-recognition comes first. Pattern-matching comes second. Reading the name comes third, said by the grown-up alongside. By the time a child can read “dandelion”, they already know what its jagged leaf looks like on the lawn.

How to play with your child

• Say the plant’s name aloud each time. “That’s a tulip. Tulips have long pointy leaves.” Repetition is the lesson.
• Talk about the leaves. “Look how jagged the dandelion leaf is — like a row of little teeth. The buttercup leaf has fingers.”
• Take it outside. Next time you’re in the park or the garden, spot the plants the game has taught. “Look! A dandelion!” closes the loop.
• Don’t rush. Three pairs per round is plenty. The stars only go up — there’s no race.

Frequently asked questions

Can my child fail?

No. There is no timer, no lives, and no fail state. A wrong drag just gives a gentle wobble — the cards stay in place and they can try again. Stars only go up.

Which plants does Flowerdle cover?

Flowerdle has ninety-eight plants across five difficulty tiers — UK garden classics, lawn wildflowers, woodland flowers, and a long tail of trickier and more exotic blooms. Your child starts with fifteen familiar plants and unlocks more as they earn stars:

• Tier 1 — from the first round. Fifteen plants every UK child meets early: tulip, sunflower, rose, daisy, dandelion, poppy, daffodil, bluebell, buttercup, pansy, lavender, foxglove, primrose, snowdrop, geranium.
• Tier 2 — unlocks at 3 stars. Fifteen garden favourites: iris, crocus, lily, marigold, magnolia, hydrangea, peony, camellia, wisteria, jasmine, clematis, nasturtium, forget-me-not, lilac, hyacinth.
• Tier 3 — unlocks at 8 stars. Nineteen prettier-than-they-sound names: snapdragon, hellebore, dahlia, gladiolus, begonia, orchid, chrysanthemum, anemone, cyclamen, fuchsia, hibiscus, azalea, freesia, gerbera, zinnia, cosmos, columbine, hollyhock, sweet pea.
• Tier 4 — unlocks at 18 stars. Twenty-five less common cultivated and wild plants: violet, cowslip, cornflower, harebell, thistle, clover, lupine, aster, goldenrod, yarrow, ragwort, knapweed, passionflower, oleander, bougainvillea, larkspur, periwinkle, agapanthus, ranunculus, water lily, lotus, cherry blossom, apple blossom, plumeria, bird of paradise.
• Tier 5 — unlocks at 35 stars. Twenty-four challenge names: jacaranda, protea, heliconia, frangipani, gardenia, alstroemeria, calla lily, statice, lisianthus, bee balm, salvia, verbena, lobelia, plumbago, godetia, nigella, calendula, alyssum, sweet William, dogwood, bottlebrush, rhododendron, rosemary, aquilegia.

Each new tier comes with a small celebration so your child knows new plants have appeared. Stars only go up — the tiers do not reset on a wrong answer.

What if my child can’t read?

Perfect — Flowerdle is built for them. The puzzle is pictures all the way through. Plant names only appear after a successful match, as a small label on the card. The grown-up reads them aloud. By the time a child reads “snowdrop” for the first time, they already know what one looks like.

More from Tadpole Games

• Fredle — a daily phonics word puzzle for UK children aged 4 to 7.
• Sumdle — trace two digits and an operator across a mixed grid to make a number.
• Flagle — the picture-led country-flag game in the same gentle progression style.

Photo credits

All flower and leaf photographs come from iNaturalist — a community-driven biodiversity database — used under various Creative Commons licences (mostly CC BY-NC and CC BY-SA). Each photo is the result of a real observation by a real naturalist. The full photographer + licence credit for every image is in the file /flowers/_credits.json in this project’s repository, alongside the iNaturalist observation IDs so you can trace any image back to its source.