Flower Arranging Trivia
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89 free Flower Arranging trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This flower arrangement trivia quiz is about the craft of putting flowers together, not the botany of the blooms themselves: ikebana and its schools, Western floral design and its seven principles, bouquets, wreaths, garlands, leis, corsages and boutonnières, the Victorian language of flowers, the great flower shows and auctions, and the florists who dressed royal weddings and coronations. The easy questions are ones most people know: what a bride does with her bouquet, which side a boutonnière goes on, and which national holiday brings a lei. From there it gets deeper: Ikenobō and the Rokkaku-dō, the kenzan pin frog, moribana and nageire, Sōfū Teshigahara's Sōgetsu credo, Constance Spry's hedgerow windows and coronation flowers, Shane Connolly's myrtle in Kate Middleton's bouquet, the Mercury Man of FTD and Interflora, the Aalsmeer auction hall, Chelsea and Philadelphia flower shows, the Advent wreath's cart-wheel origins, oshibana pressed-flower art and the Edinburgh floral clock. If you want the flowers themselves, our Flower Trivia quiz covers roses, tulips and the rest. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the schools, people, events and customs named before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The French word bouquet originally meant what?
Little wood
Bouquet comes from Old French boschet, 'little wood' or thicket, a diminutive of bosc, 'wood'; the sense narrowed to a clump of flowers by the early 18th century.
Q 02In floral design, what is the term for the first thing that attracts the viewer's eye?
Focal point
The focal point is the main feature of a design; rhythm, balance and scale are among the other principles.
Q 03Which ancient people were among the first to place lotus flowers and buds in vases, some 4,000 years ago?
Egyptians
The Egyptians were placing cut lotus flowers and buds in vases as early as 2500 BCE, as tomb paintings and reliefs show; the lotus was sacred to the goddess Isis.
Q 04Ikebana's three main line placements correspond to heaven, earth and what?
Humans
The three main lines of an ikebana arrangement represent heaven, humans and earth (ten-chi-jin), a scheme credited to the painter Sōami.
Q 05The oldest known book on flower arranging is from which country and year?
Japan, 1445
The oldest known book on flower arranging is Japanese: the Sendensho, an ikebana manual whose earliest material dates from 1445.
Q 06What is the alternative name for ikebana, meaning 'way of flowers'?
Kadō
Chadō is the tea ceremony and kōdō incense appreciation.
Q 07Ikebana is one of Japan's three classical arts of refinement, with tea ceremony and what?
Incense appreciation
Kōdō is the incense art.
Q 08In a traditional Japanese home, ikebana arrangements were placed in which alcove?
Tokonoma
The tokonoma is the raised alcove of a traditional Japanese room where an ikebana arrangement and a hanging scroll are displayed.
Q 09Which shōgun, patron of tea ceremony and ikebana, abdicated to devote himself to the arts?
Ashikaga Yoshimasa
Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eighth Ashikaga shōgun, stepped down in 1473 and fostered Higashiyama culture, patronising the tea ceremony and ikebana.
Q 10Which is the oldest and largest school of ikebana?
Ikenobō
Ikenobō, first recorded in 1462 when the priest Ikenobō Senkei arranged flowers in Kyoto, is the oldest and largest school of ikebana.
Q 11The oldest school of ikebana is based at which Kyoto temple?
Rokkaku-dō
The name Rokkaku refers to the temple's hexagonal shape.
Q 12The name of ikebana's oldest school combines the word for a pond with the word for what?
A small hut for priests
Ikenobō joins ike, 'pond', with bō, a small hut or lodging for priests: the priests lived beside the pond where Prince Shōtoku was said to have bathed.
Q 13What does the ikebana term rikka mean?
Standing flowers
Rikka means 'standing flowers'; the style grew from Buddhist altar offerings placed upright in tall vases and was formalised by the Ikenobō school.
Q 21The Ohara school was the first to award ikebana teaching certificates to whom?
Women
The Ohara school was the first to grant ikebana teaching certificates to women; under the founder's son Koun it also moved from individual lessons to group classes.
Q 22Which 1954 brand of water-absorbing floral foam became the generic name for the product?
Oasis
Oasis, the phenolic foam introduced by Smithers-Oasis of Ohio in 1954, soaks up water and grips stems, and its name became shorthand for all floral foam.
Q 23Which guild ran the Paris flower trade from 1677 to 1791?
Maîtresses bouquetières
The Maîtresses bouquetières, a guild of women flower sellers chartered in 1677, controlled the Paris flower trade until French guilds were abolished in 1791.
Q 14In rikka arrangements, what do pine branches symbolise?
Endurance and eternity
In rikka, pine branches symbolise endurance and eternity: the evergreen pine, which keeps its needles through winter, is a classic Japanese emblem of longevity.
Q 15Nageire, an informal ikebana style, takes its name from a word meaning what?
Thrown in
Nageire means 'thrown in'; legend says a bored samurai threw plants into a tall vase.
Q 16Which ikebana founder introduced the moribana style around 1890?
Ohara Unshin
Ohara Unshin, who left Ikenobō to found the Ohara school in 1895, introduced moribana in the 1890s to use the Western flowers arriving after the Meiji Restoration.
Q 17What kind of container does a proper moribana design use?
A flat, shallow one
The suiban lets materials spread sideways.
Q 18The kenzan, or pin frog, literally means what in Japanese?
Sword mountain
Kenzan is written with the characters for sword (ken) and mountain (zan), describing its bed of upright brass needles set in a heavy lead base.
Q 19Which ikebana school was founded by Sōfū Teshigahara in 1927?
Sōgetsu
Sōgetsu, founded by Sōfū Teshigahara in 1927, holds that ikebana can be done by anyone, anywhere, anytime, with any material.
Q 20Sōfū Teshigahara's daughter was succeeded as Sōgetsu head by her brother Hiroshi, better known as what?
A film director
Hiroshi Teshigahara directed Woman in the Dunes.
Q 24Flower auctions use which pricing system?
Dutch clock
Flower auctions run on the Dutch clock, a descending-price system: the price starts high and drops until a buyer stops the clock.
Q 25The world's largest flower auction is in which Dutch town?
Aalsmeer
Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam, hosts Royal FloraHolland's main auction, whose hall is one of the largest buildings in the world by floor area.
Q 26Covent Garden's wholesale flower and produce market moved in 1974 to which London district?
Nine Elms
Covent Garden's wholesale market, flowers included, left its historic piazza in 1974 for a new site at Nine Elms in Vauxhall, now New Covent Garden Market.
Q 27London's Columbia Road Flower Market opens on which day only?
Sunday
Columbia Road Flower Market trades on Sunday mornings only; the street market grew out of Columbia Market, founded by philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts in 1869.
Q 28FTD was founded in 1910 as Florists' Telegraph Delivery in which city?
Rochester, New York
FTD began in Rochester, New York, in 1910, when a group of florists meeting at the city's Seneca Hotel agreed to exchange out-of-town orders by telegraph.
Q 29FTD's Mercury Man logo, adopted in 1914, is based on a sculpture by whom?
Giambologna
The Mercury Man copies Giambologna's bronze Flying Mercury of about 1580; the winged messenger god was chosen to symbolise speedy delivery.
Q 30In what year did the UK arm of FTD change its name to Interflora?
1953
The British arm of FTD, founded in 1923 as the Florists' Telegraph Delivery Association, adopted the name Interflora in 1953.