60 free Fungi trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fungi are their own kingdom, closer kin to animals than to plants, and there may be three million species of them, of which we have named barely 150,000. This quiz covers the biology: chitin cell walls, hyphae and mycelium, spores fired at 10,000 g, chytrids that swim, and the seven phyla from sac fungi to club fungi. It then follows fungi into human life: yeast and Pasteur, koji and blue cheese, Fleming's contaminated dish and the 1945 Nobel, statins and ciclosporin, ergot and aflatoxin, the death cap and the truffle pigs Italy banned. There are questions on lichens that survived open space, the mycorrhizal networks that feed nine out of ten plants, the zombie-ant fungus, the chytrid killing the world's frogs, and the Oregon honey fungus that may be the largest organism alive. If you want mushrooms specifically, our Mushroom Trivia quiz covers edible and deadly species; this one is about the whole kingdom. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on fungi, yeast, penicillin, lichens and the individual species, and each question shows its supporting sentence after you answer.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which substance in their cell walls sets fungi apart from plants, bacteria and most protists?
Chitin
The same tough polymer forms the exoskeletons of insects and crabs; fungi are the only organisms that combine it with glucans in a cell wall.
Q 02Genetically, fungi are more closely related to which group than to plants?
Animals
Both sit in the opisthokonts, a lineage marked by a single trailing flagellum, and both are heterotrophs that must eat rather than photosynthesise.
Q 03What is the scientific study of fungi called?
Mycology
The word comes from the Greek mykes, mushroom; the discipline was once treated as a branch of botany.
Q 04Roughly how many fungal species have been formally described, out of an estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million?
About 148,000
More than 90 percent of fungi are thought to be still unknown; 2,905 new species were named in 2020 alone, a record.
Q 05The Latin word fungus, used by Horace and Pliny, ultimately derives from a Greek word meaning what?
Sponge
The same root gives German its words for both sponge and mould.
Q 06What are the thread-like filaments that make up the body of most fungi called?
Hyphae
They are just 2 to 10 micrometres across, grow only at their tips, and can push through plant tissue with pressures over 1,200 psi.
Q 07What is the interconnected network of fungal filaments called?
Mycelium
Grown on damp walls or spoiled food it is what we call mould; grown on agar in a petri dish it is called a colony.
Q 08How do fungi obtain their food?
Secreting enzymes, then absorbing
They are the planet's principal decomposers, and along with bacteria they drive most nutrient cycles.
Q 09How many phyla did the 2007 consensus classification of the fungal kingdom recognise?
Seven
Two of them form the subkingdom Dikarya, which holds nearly everything familiar: mushrooms, moulds and brewing yeasts.
Q 10The largest fungal phylum, the Ascomycota, is commonly known by what name?
Sac fungi
Their spores form inside a sac called an ascus; the group includes morels, truffles, yeasts and Penicillium.
Q 11Which group of fungi are the only ones with actively swimming spores, driven by a single flagellum?
Chytrids
That motility once led taxonomists to file them with the protists; their zoospores let them hunt down amphibian hosts in water.
Q 12Water moulds (oomycetes) and slime moulds were once classed as fungi. Why are oomycetes now excluded?
Their walls are cellulose, not chitin
Slime moulds are out for a different reason: they engulf food by phagocytosis rather than absorbing it.
Q 13What organism was Ötzi the Iceman carrying, 5,300 years ago, that may have served as tinder or medicine?
Two kinds of bracket fungus
Q 21Marmite and Vegemite are made from what?
Yeast extract
Salt is added to a yeast suspension, the cells digest themselves, and the result is a spread rich in B vitamins.
Q 22Which mould is the essential ingredient for brewing soy sauce and sake and making miso?
Aspergillus oryzae (koji)
Rhizopus moulds do a similar job for tempeh; these are domesticated strains selected not to produce toxins.
Q 23Which fungus is inoculated into curds to create the blue veins in Stilton and Roquefort?
Penicillium roqueforti
Cheese moulds are non-toxic, though other fungi growing during ripening can leave mycotoxins behind.
One was Fomes fomentarius, the tinder fungus, and the other Piptoporus betulinus, the birch polypore.
Q 14Whose 1729 Nova plantarum genera is considered the founding text of the study of fungi?
Pier Antonio Micheli
Fungal spores had first been seen by Giambattista della Porta back in 1588.
Q 15How do fungi such as Armillaria compensate for having no xylem or phloem to move water?
They form root-like cords called rhizomorphs
Those cords let the honey fungus spread underground for kilometres and attack tree after tree.
Q 16What in Oregon's Malheur National Forest is often called the largest living organism on Earth?
A honey fungus 3.5 square miles across
The Armillaria ostoyae colony is estimated to be around 8,000 years old.
Q 17Yeasts reproduce mainly by which method?
Budding
A small daughter cell swells off the parent and pinches free; a few species use fission instead.
Q 18Roughly what share of all described fungal species are yeasts?
About 1%
At least 1,500 yeast species are known, and they do not form one natural group: they turn up in two separate phyla.
Q 19Which microbiologist proved in the 1850s that alcoholic fermentation is carried out by living yeast?
Louis Pasteur
He also found that bubbling oxygen through the broth boosted yeast growth but shut down fermentation, still called the Pasteur effect.
Q 20Which ancient civilisation's ruins hold 4,000-year-old evidence of yeast-raised bread and brewing?
Egypt
Vessels from sites in Israel up to 5,000 years old still held living yeast colonies from ancient beer and mead.
Q 24Who noticed in September 1928 that a mould contaminating a Staphylococcus culture had killed it?
Alexander Fleming
He coined the word penicillin the following March, to avoid repeating the phrase 'mould broth filtrate'.
Q 25Which two scientists shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Fleming for turning penicillin into a usable drug?
Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
Their Oxford team isolated the purified compound in 1940; the first US patient, Anne Miller, used half the country's entire supply in 1942.
Q 26Which fungal product is used to stop transplant patients rejecting new organs?
Ciclosporin
It comes from the fungus Tolypocladium inflatum, a relative of the zombie-ant fungus.
Q 27Lovastatin comes from Aspergillus terreus and which edible mushroom?
The oyster mushroom
Mevastatin, the first, came from a Penicillium species; the shiitake instead yields the anti-cancer drug lentinan.
Q 28Ergot fungus growing on rye caused which historical epidemic disease?
St Anthony's Fire
Claviceps purpurea's alkaloids cause convulsions and gangrene, and are chemical cousins of LSD.
Q 29Aflatoxins, among the most carcinogenic natural substances, are produced by which moulds?
Aspergillus species
They are insidious liver toxins, and peanut and maize stores in warm climates are the classic source.
Q 30Which mushroom is responsible for about 90 percent of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide?
The death cap
Half a cap can kill an adult; its amatoxins destroy the liver, and it has hitch-hiked around the world on the roots of imported oaks.