Figs
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40 free Figs trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The fig is one of the oldest foods people have grown, and one of the strangest. What looks like a simple fruit hides an odd piece of botany, and the tree behind it has relatives that swallow other trees whole, shade entire villages and sit in living rooms around the world. This quiz covers the fig from every side: how the fruit forms and ripens, the varieties and the crops they give, the cookies and puddings that carry its name, and the place of the fig tree in ancient history, legend and scripture. It is written for curious eaters, gardeners and pub quiz regulars alike. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more about figs than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which insect crawls inside a fig through a tiny opening to pollinate it, often losing its wings?
Wasp
Wasp females squeeze in through the fig's narrow opening, lay their eggs, pollinate it and die inside. Most fig species depend on a partner insect of their own.
Q 02Fig Newtons, launched by the Kennedy Biscuit Company, are named after a suburb of which US city?
Boston
Boston's suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, lent its name when a plant manager christened the new fig-filled cookie after the nearby town.
Q 03In Genesis, which couple sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves after eating forbidden fruit?
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve's leafy cover-up is why later artists and censors used fig leaves to hide the nudity of painted and sculpted figures.
Q 04Which teacher is said to have reached enlightenment after seven weeks meditating under a sacred fig?
The Buddha
The Buddha sat beneath a Ficus religiosa, now known as the bodhi tree, and its heart-shaped leaves became a symbol of wisdom in religious art.
Q 05Which country grows more figs than any other, with its Aydın province famous for dried fruit exports?
Turkey
Turkey harvests roughly a quarter of the world's figs, and its dried crop was long sold abroad as Smyrna figs after the port that shipped them.
Q 06In Roman legend, which twins were suckled by a she-wolf in the shade of a wild fig tree?
Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus drifted ashore in their cradle beside the tree, the Ficus Ruminalis, which Romans went on to treat as sacred.
Q 07According to Plutarch, which queen died after an asp was smuggled to her in a basket of figs?
Cleopatra
Cleopatra's snake in the fruit basket is only one version Plutarch offers: he also mentions poison scratched into her skin with a hairpin.
Q 08A fig's hollow interior is lined with many of which plant part, hidden completely from view?
Flowers
Flowers bloom unseen inside every fig, which is why the tree never shows blossom. The crunchy seeds are really the tiny one-seeded fruits those flowers leave behind.
Q 09The French, Spanish and Italian words for which organ descend from a Latin term meaning fig-stuffed?
Liver
Liver from geese fattened on figs was the Roman delicacy iecur ficatum, and the fig half of the phrase survives in foie, hígado and fegato.
Q 10Despite its name, the figgy pudding demanded in a famous carol was often made with which dried fruit?
Raisins
Raisins filled the puddings of England's West Country, where a figgy pudding meant a raisin or plum pudding and need not contain a single fig.
Q 11Figs share a plant family with breadfruit and jackfruit that is usually named after which other fruit?
Mulberry
Mulberry gives the family Moraceae its everyday name. About the only trait all of its members share is a milky sap in their soft tissues.
Q 12Black Mission figs reached California in the 18th century with missionaries of which Catholic order?
Franciscans
Franciscans planted the dark-skinned fig at San Diego and carried it north as each new mission was built, and the early padres grew no other variety.
Q 13Which English word for a fawning flatterer comes from a Greek term meaning one who shows figs?
Sycophant
Sycophant first meant a malicious accuser in the courts of Athens, and one old story ties the name to informers who reported illegal fig exports.
Q 21The banyan fig is named after the Baniyas, members of which profession who gathered in its shade?
Traders
Traders known as banians gathered beneath such a tree and, in one account, built a small shrine there, so European travellers borrowed their name for the fig itself.
Q 22The fiddle-leaf fig, a fashionable houseplant of the 2010s, grows wild in the rainforests of which region?
West Africa
West Africa is home to the wild tree, which can reach 12 metres in lowland forest from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, far taller than any living-room specimen.
Q 23In Meghalaya, the Khasi people train the aerial roots of fig trees into which living structures?
Bridges
Bridges of living root strengthen as the trees grow: a mature one can carry 50 people at once and may last for several hundred years.
Q 14At-Tin, the Quran's 95th sura, is named for the fig and opens by naming it beside which fruit?
Olive
Olive and fig open the sura as a pair, which commentators read as symbols of the eastern Mediterranean lands where both trees thrive.
Q 15The banyan, a fig that turns hanging roots into extra trunks, is which country's national tree?
India
India's national tree can spread over more than a hectare, and one famous giant near Kolkata has lived on its prop trunks alone since its main trunk was removed in 1925.
Q 16Which material was once tapped across Sumatra and Malaya from the sap of a fig now popular as a houseplant?
Rubber
Rubber came from Ficus elastica, sold today as the rubber plant, until the Pará tree arrived from Brazil in the late 1800s and took over the plantations.
Q 17What name is given to figs that sprout in a treetop, send roots down and slowly envelop their host?
Stranglers
Stranglers start life high in the canopy to win the race for light, and when the host tree dies they can stand on as a hollow column of roots.
Q 18Which American snack company, formed by a bakery merger in 1898, trademarked the Fig Newton?
Nabisco
Nabisco, born as the National Biscuit Company, inherited the recipe and its dough-and-jam machine, then dropped Fig from the cookie's name in 2012.
Q 19Since the late 1800s, syrup of figs blended with senna has been sold as which kind of remedy?
Laxative
Laxative syrups made the fig a medicine-cabinet staple, while older Mediterranean folk practice dabbed the tree's milky sap on warts and calluses.
Q 20Which Greek philosopher wrote that tiny insects leave wild figs and keep cultivated figs from dropping?
Aristotle
Aristotle described the insects in his History of Animals but believed they arose spontaneously, never guessing they carried pollen between trees.
Q 24Seedless figs found at Gilgal I suggest people grew figs a thousand years before domesticating which grain?
Wheat
Wheat followed about a thousand years after the 11,400-year-old figs stored in a Jordan Valley house, which may make the fig the first plant humans farmed.
Q 25Which Roman emperor was rumoured to have been killed by figs that his wife Livia smeared with poison?
Augustus
Augustus is said to have eaten the fruit from his own garden, and a fig variety called the Liviana was later grown by Roman gardeners.
Q 26The fig sign, a thumb tucked between two fingers, was traditionally made to ward off which threat?
The evil eye
The evil eye was the gesture's main target, and ancient Greeks wore amulets shaped like the fist around their necks for the same protection.
Q 27A detachable plaster fig leaf was made to cover a cast of which statue during Queen Victoria's visits?
David
David, in a plaster copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum, had the leaf hung on two hooks before royal visits. The leaf is now displayed beside the cast.
Q 28The caprifig, the wild fig whose pollen cultivated trees need, is named in part after which animal?
Goat
Goat is caper in Latin, and the name stuck to the inedible wild fig that Greek farmers tied into their orchards so the cultivated crop would set.
Q 29Fig tree sap contains ficin, an enzyme that, like pineapple's bromelain, breaks down which nutrient?
Protein
Protein is what ficin digests, so the enzyme has been added to meat tenderisers and is used to clean the material for surgical stitches.
Q 30Which Athenian statesman is said to have made a law around 590 BC banning the export of figs from Attica?
Solon
Solon let only one product of the soil be sold abroad, and Plutarch thought that made the old tale of a ban on fig exports believable.