🌿 Plants & Fungi Trivia Questions & Answers
Trees, flowers, mushrooms and the green (and not-so-green) kingdom. Below are 30 free plants & fungi trivia questions with answers — part of Nature trivia on BUZZ. Want a real challenge that adapts to what you know? Play the Nature quiz — no signup needed to start.
30 Plants & Fungi trivia questions
Q1. Which giant flower earns its nickname by smelling like rotting flesh whenever it finally blooms?
Answer: Corpse flower
💡 The corpse flower even heats up its own core to help the stinky chemicals waft further, tricking carrion beetles and flies into pollinating it.
Q2. Which cheerful yellow bloom is famous for slowly swiveling to track the sun across the day?
Answer: Sunflower
💡 Only young sunflowers actually track the sun — as they mature, their stems stiffen and the flower heads settle into facing east permanently.
Q3. What everyday orange veg is technically a root, storing sugar underground below a sunlit green top?
Answer: Carrot
💡 A carrot's swollen taproot is basically a sugar warehouse the plant builds up to fuel its flowering the following year — which is why it tastes sweet despite never seeing sunlight.
Q4. Pines, firs, and spruces are all examples of which needle-leaved plant group?
Answer: Conifers
💡 Conifers are gymnosperms, bearing their seeds openly in cones rather than inside a fruit.
Q5. Which gas do plants absorb from the atmosphere during photosynthesis?
Answer: Carbon dioxide
💡 Plants take in CO₂ and water, then use sunlight to create glucose and release oxygen — essentially the reverse of respiration.
Q6. What is the name given to the process by which water evaporates from plant leaves?
Answer: Transpiration
💡 A single large tree can transpire over 200 litres of water per day, effectively acting as a natural air conditioner.
Q7. Which plant is known for having the largest flower in the world?
Answer: Rafflesia arnoldii
💡 Rafflesia arnoldii can grow flowers up to 1 metre in diameter and smells like rotting flesh to attract flies for pollination.
Q8. What is the world's tallest type of grass?
Answer: Bamboo
💡 Some bamboo species can grow 30 metres tall — taller than many trees — while still technically being a grass.
Q9. A mushroom in the grass is just the visible part — name a fungus's underground thread network.
Answer: Mycelium
💡 Mycelium is made of countless thread-like hyphae that can link separate trees and fungi together underground into one vast nutrient-sharing web.
Q10. Which garden veg is technically a fruit by botany, yet an 1893 court case ruled it a vegetable?
Answer: Tomato
💡 In Nix v. Hedden, the Supreme Court sided with the everyday, kitchen-table meaning of the word 'vegetable' over strict botany, all so a tomato importer could dodge a tariff.
Q11. Chlorophyll gives leaves their green colour by absorbing which two colours of light?
Answer: Red and blue
💡 A leaf's green look actually comes mostly from light bouncing off its cell walls, not simple reflection.
Q12. What term names the tiny pores that let a leaf exchange gases with the air?
Answer: Stomata
💡 Though stomata cover under 5% of a leaf's surface, they handle about 95% of all its gas exchange.
Q13. Which single-celled fungus makes bread dough rise and turns sugar into alcohol?
Answer: Yeast
💡 The species behind most bread, beer, and wine is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, nicknamed baker's or brewer's yeast.
Q14. Which is the tallest species of tree in the world?
Answer: Coast redwood
💡 The tallest known living tree is Hyperion, a coast redwood in California, measuring 115.92 metres. Redwood forests capture more carbon per hectare than any other forest on Earth.
Q15. What is the study of fungi called?
Answer: Mycology
💡 Fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. The largest known organism on Earth is a honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) in Oregon, spreading across 9.65 km².
Q16. How many trigger-hair touches, within seconds, does it take to snap a Venus flytrap shut?
Answer: Twice
💡 The plant needs two touches within about 20 seconds to close, and then five total touches before it bothers making digestive enzymes — a built-in check against wasting energy on false alarms.
Q17. What tiny insect, nearly the only pollinator small enough for a cacao flower, gives us chocolate?
Answer: A midge
💡 These pinhead-sized midges are so inefficient that only around 10 to 20 percent of cacao flowers ever get pollinated and turn into pods.
Q18. As chlorophyll fades each autumn, which pigments give leaves their orange and yellow hues?
Answer: Carotenoids
💡 Anthocyanins are a different pigment that turns some autumn leaves red or purple instead.
Q19. What tricks insects into sliding straight off a pitcher plant's rim into its trap?
Answer: A film of water
💡 The trap's digestive fluid is thick and elastic, helping it hang onto struggling insects.
Q20. A sundew's glistening leaf droplets aren't dew at all — what are they really?
Answer: Sticky mucilage
💡 A trapped insect's struggling makes nearby tentacles curl inward, dragging it deeper into the leaf.
Q21. Which mould genus accidentally gave Alexander Fleming the first antibiotic?
Answer: Penicillium
💡 Fleming noticed the mould had killed nearby bacteria on a petri dish he'd forgotten before a holiday.
Q22. Counting a felled tree's growth rings mainly reveals what fact about the tree?
Answer: Its age
💡 Ring width also records history — a thin ring often marks a rough year of drought or cold.
Q23. Which plant tissue carries water upward from the roots to the leaves?
Answer: Xylem
💡 Phloem does the opposite job, moving sugars made in the leaves out to the roots and fruits.
Q24. Nicknamed the 'tree of life,' which African tree stores water in its huge trunk?
Answer: Baobab
💡 A baobab's trunk can hold up to 120,000 litres of water, tiding it through months of drought.
Q25. What is the name of the world's largest flower, which grows in the rainforests of Southeast Asia?
Answer: Rafflesia
💡 Rafflesia arnoldii produces flowers up to 1 metre wide and weighing up to 11 kg. It is a parasite with no roots, stems, or leaves — just the enormous flower, which smells of rotting flesh to attract flies.
Q26. Tucked in California's White Mountains is a pine so old it predates the pyramids — which kind?
Answer: Bristlecone pine
💡 The oldest known bristlecone pine has been dated to over 5,000 years old, making it one of the oldest living things ever verified on Earth.
Q27. Corn and sugarcane use which special photosynthesis pathway suited to heat and drought?
Answer: C4 photosynthesis
💡 C4 plants are only about 3% of species, yet they capture nearly a fifth of Earth's photosynthesized carbon.
Q28. Name the partnership that pairs a fungus with an alga or cyanobacterium.
Answer: Lichen
💡 The alga or cyanobacterium photosynthesizes food for both partners, while the fungus supplies structure and protection.
Q29. What term describes seed plants like pines, whose seeds sit exposed and unenclosed?
Answer: Gymnosperms
💡 Gymnosperm means 'naked seed' in Greek, while flowering angiosperms enclose their seeds inside a fruit.
Q30. Which palm from the Seychelles produces the plant kingdom's largest seed?
Answer: Coco de mer
💡 A single coco de mer seed can weigh up to 30 kilograms and take years just to germinate.
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