Metaflora

Metaflora is a daily plant-guessing puzzle that hides one secret plant inside the botanical tree of life. Every wrong guess tells you how closely related your plant is to the answer by shared taxonomic rank, so you deduce your way down from kingdom to species instead of matching letters. It is the plant-world counterpart to Metazooa, built on the same family-tree logic.

What is Metaflora?

Metaflora is a daily botany puzzle where a single Mystery Plant is hidden behind the plant kingdom's taxonomic tree, and your job is to find it in 25 guesses or fewer. You type the name of any plant, and instead of grading letters the game grades kinship: it places your guess on the tree of life and tells you how far up the branches you have to climb before your plant and the secret plant share a common ancestor. A guess that lands in the same genus is very warm, while one that only meets the answer at the level of kingdom is about as cold as it gets. Because there is one puzzle per day shared by every player, the appeal is partly social: everyone is hunting the same plant and comparing how efficiently they cornered it.

What sets Metaflora apart from Wordle-style games is that it has almost nothing to do with spelling. There is no five-letter grid and no green-and-yellow letter feedback. The hidden structure is real botanical classification, so your reasoning runs through orders, families, and genera rather than vowels and consonants. This makes Metaflora feel closer to a logic and deduction game than a word game, and it rewards curiosity about how plants are actually related. A fern, a pine, and a sunflower are not just three plants; they are three very different limbs of the tree, and learning which limb you are standing on is the whole challenge.

Metaflora is made by Trainwreck Labs, the studio behind the animal version Metazooa and the geography game Globle. It is the plant-focused sibling of Metazooa and shares its core engine, which is why the two play almost identically apart from the kingdom they cover and the guess count: Metaflora gives you 25 guesses while Metazooa gives 20. Each wrong guess narrows the answer by taxonomic rank, drawing the shared portion of the tree so you can see exactly where your plant diverged from the target. If you get stuck, you can trade three of your guesses for a hint that reveals the next taxonomic rank down toward the answer, a useful escape hatch when you know the family but cannot pin the species.

When you finally name the right plant, Metaflora produces a spoiler-free result you can share, summarizing how many guesses it took without giving away the day's answer. The difficulty is genuinely variable: a well-known crop plant can fall quickly, while an obscure mystery plant can burn through most of your 25 attempts. The vibe is calm and educational rather than frantic, and it tends to appeal to gardeners, biology students, trivia fans, and anyone who likes the daily-puzzle habit but wants something with more depth than letter guessing. Even a loss usually teaches you a new corner of the plant family tree, which is a large part of why players come back the next day.

How to play Metaflora

1. Open Metaflora and read the single daily Mystery Plant prompt; everyone gets the same plant that day.
2. Type the name of any plant as your first guess and submit it.
3. Read the feedback, which places your guess on the taxonomic tree and shows the closest rank you share with the answer, such as order, family, or genus.
4. Use that shared rank to choose your next guess from a closer branch of the plant kingdom.
5. If you get stuck, trade three of your remaining guesses for a hint that reveals the next taxonomic rank down toward the answer.
6. Keep narrowing until you name the exact Mystery Plant within your 25-guess limit, then share your spoiler-free result.

Tips and strategy

• Open with plants from clearly different groups, such as a fern, a conifer, and a flowering crop, so your first results quickly tell you which major branch the answer lives on.
• Treat the shared rank as your compass: a match at family is much warmer than a match at order, so always push toward guesses that raise that shared level.
• Think in botanical families, not looks, because plants that resemble each other can sit far apart on the tree while unlikely-looking ones can be close cousins.
• Once you have the right family or genus, spend guesses on its well-known members rather than wandering, since you are usually only a few species away.
• Save the three-guess hint for when you are confident about the family but cannot identify the species; spending it too early wastes attempts you may need later.
• Lean on common, widely cataloged plants like crops, garden flowers, and major trees, since the game recognizes them reliably and they map cleanly onto the tree.

Good to know

Resets

Daily, one new Mystery Plant every 24 hours

Cost

Free to play in a web browser

Guesses

25 guesses per puzzle

Hints

Trade 3 guesses for a hint (next taxonomic rank down)

Creator

Trainwreck Labs (also behind Metazooa and Globle)

Platform

Browser, at flora.metazooa.com

Metaflora FAQ

Is Metaflora free?

Yes. Metaflora is free to play in a web browser at flora.metazooa.com, with one daily puzzle available to everyone.

How many guesses do you get in Metaflora?

You get 25 guesses to identify the daily Mystery Plant. You can also trade three of those guesses for a hint that reveals the next taxonomic rank down toward the answer.

When does Metaflora reset?

Metaflora runs on a 24-hour cycle, so a new Mystery Plant becomes available each day once the current daily puzzle ends.

Is Metaflora related to Wordle?

It shares the once-a-day, guess-and-share format popularized by Wordle, but it is not a word game. Instead of matching letters, you deduce a secret plant using its position on the botanical tree of life.

How is Metaflora different from Metazooa?

Metaflora and Metazooa are sibling games from Trainwreck Labs that play almost identically. Metaflora hides a plant and gives 25 guesses, while Metazooa hides an animal and gives 20.