Calla Lilies
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40 free Calla Lilies trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The calla lily is one of the most recognisable flowers in the world, and almost nothing about it is what it seems. Its name is misleading, its elegant bloom is not built the way most people assume, and the plant that fills wedding bouquets is treated as a weed in some of the places it has spread to. This quiz turns the best calla lily fun facts into questions: where the plant grows wild and what lives alongside it, how the flower works, why it should be kept away from pets, and how it got its scientific name. It also covers the calla lily's life in culture, from celebrated paintings and photographs to a much-quoted film line and a badge worn in remembrance. It is written for gardeners, florists, brides-to-be and anyone who likes a surprising plant fact. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which small animal hides inside wild calla lily blooms, turning pale to ambush visiting insects?
A frog
A frog, the arum lily reed frog, sits in the white blooms by day with its bright orange feet tucked out of sight under its body.
Q 02In Mexico the calla lily goes by a name it shares with which notorious former island prison?
Alcatraz
Alcatraz is the everyday Mexican word for the flower, while the island's name comes from an old Spanish word for a pelican.
Q 03Which American painter made news when six of her calla lily canvases reportedly sold for $25,000?
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe saw her prices rise after the publicity, though there is no evidence the 1928 sale happened the way her husband and dealer Alfred Stieglitz announced it.
Q 04Which star reused a line about calla lilies from her flop play The Lake in the 1937 film Stage Door?
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn was making fun of her own biggest failure: on Broadway the play had drawn her sharp rebukes from the newspaper critics.
Q 05The white calla lily is native to the marshes and stream banks of which part of the world?
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is its native home, centred on South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini; gardeners have since carried the genus to every continent except Antarctica.
Q 06Irish republicans wear a paper calla lily badge each spring to honour the dead of which rebellion?
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising of 1916 is what the badge recalls, and its green, white and orange echo the tricolour raised over Dublin's General Post Office.
Q 07Which farmyard animal, whose wild cousins eat its rootstock, gives the calla lily an old nickname?
Pig
Pig lily is still listed among the plant's common names, and in its homeland the large underground stem is dug up and eaten by wild pigs and porcupines.
Q 08Which Mexican muralist made calla lilies a recurring motif in his paintings of flower vendors?
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera, better known for vast public murals and his marriage to Frida Kahlo, put the flower in many easel works such as The Flower Vendor.
Q 09The Irish republican calla lily badge was launched in the 1920s as a rival to which flower emblem?
The poppy
The poppy appeal raised money for ex-servicemen, so republican women sold a paper lily instead to support the families of republican prisoners.
Q 10Which virtue has the white calla lily long symbolised, making it a favourite in bridal bouquets?
Purity
Purity is the link: the plant is neither an arum nor a lily, yet it borrowed the lily's meaning and has graced bridal bouquets for generations.
Q 11The calla lily's genus Zantedeschia honours a botanist from which European country?
Italy
Italy was home to Giovanni Zantedeschi, who exchanged letters with the German botanist Kurt Sprengel, the man who named the genus in his honour.
Q 12Which naturalist described the genus Calla in 1753, where calla lilies were first classified?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus placed the plants in Calla, but they were later moved to a genus of their own, leaving one northern bog plant as the only true calla.
Q 13The broad dark green leaves of the white calla lily are usually described as shaped like what?
An arrowhead
An arrowhead is the usual comparison, and a single leaf can reach 45 cm long, with its size varying according to how much shade the plant gets.
Q 21Which country's National Pest Plant Accord bans the sale of the green-striped calla lily 'Green Goddess'?
New Zealand
New Zealand outlaws growing, selling or distributing the variety, whose green stripes help each bloom last much longer than the plain white form.
Q 22Calla lily foliage can drip water from its tips to shed excess moisture, a process botanists call what?
Guttation
Guttation works through special water pores, which stops the plant becoming waterlogged and lets it thrive with its feet in a marsh.
Q 23Zantedeschia rehmannii, a parent of many hybrid calla lilies, has a common name featuring which colour?
Pink
Pink arum lily is its usual name, though the blooms actually range from mauve to rose-purple, with paler margins.
Q 14Once a wild calla lily's berries ripen and soften, which animals mainly spread the seeds?
Birds
Birds are drawn to the soft ripe berries, which stay hidden until the green sheath wrapped around them rots away to expose the fruit.
Q 15Which US state breeds new calla lily hybrids commercially and has wild colonies along its coast?
California
California growers supply both cut flowers and planting stock, and the white species has escaped from gardens to naturalise along the coast.
Q 16The white 'petal' of a calla lily is not a petal at all but a modified version of which plant part?
A leaf
A leaf is what it is: botanists call the showy funnel a spathe, and it starts out green before unfolding and turning white.
Q 17What do botanists call the yellow spike at the heart of a calla lily, which carries its tiny true flowers?
Spadix
Spadix is the term, and on this plant it bears separate male and female flowers so reduced that they have no petals of their own.
Q 18Which needle-sharp crystals make every part of a raw calla lily burn the mouth, lips and throat?
Calcium oxalate
Calcium oxalate crystals are the culprit, yet cooking tames them: in its homeland the plant was traditionally boiled and eaten.
Q 19The white calla lily grows not from a true bulb but from which thick underground stems, as ginger does?
Rhizomes
Rhizomes let the plant multiply by offsets, which is how moved soil and dumped garden cuttings have spread it far beyond the flower bed.
Q 20Which starchy staple crop of the Pacific islands belongs to the same plant family as the calla lily?
Taro
Taro shares the family's defences too: raw, it is laced with the same kind of irritant crystals, so it has to be cooked before anyone eats it.
Q 24Which photographer, whose show The Perfect Moment sparked a censorship row, often shot calla lilies?
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe photographed orchids and calla lilies alongside portraits of stars such as Debbie Harry, Grace Jones and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Q 25Which American photographer's close-up Two Callas, a study of calla lilies, debuted at Film und Foto in 1929?
Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham was put forward for the exhibition by Edward Weston, who nominated ten of her photographs, eight of them botanical.
Q 26Because it tolerates iron and thrives in wet ground, the white calla lily has been used to treat what?
Wastewater
Wastewater treatment suits a plant that grows wild in marshes and can happily stand in water around 30 cm deep.
Q 27The calla lily reached Europe so early that it appears in a 1664 account of the royal garden in which city?
Paris
Paris had it growing in the Royal Garden by 1664, and the plant may have reached Europe even before the Dutch set up their first outpost in its homeland.
Q 28In classical times the calla lily's species name aethiopica meant lands south of Libya and which ancient land?
Egypt
Egypt and Libya marked the southern edge of the known world, so the name has nothing directly to do with modern Ethiopia, where the plant is not native.
Q 29Which British body gave its Award of Garden Merit to the hardy calla lily cultivar 'Crowborough'?
Royal Horticultural Society
The Royal Horticultural Society also honoured 'Green Goddess'; 'Crowborough' is the more cold-tolerant pick for cool climates such as Britain and Ireland.
Q 30The ASPCA lists the calla lily as toxic to dogs and which other common household pet?
Cats
Cats that chew the plant suffer intense burning of the mouth, tongue and lips, with drooling, vomiting and trouble swallowing.