Gymnosperms
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Gymnosperms trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gymnosperms were here long before the first flower opened. This ancient group of plants includes the conifers that cover whole mountain ranges, the palm-like cycads, the ginkgo of city streets and a handful of oddities found nowhere else in the plant kingdom. Between them they hold many of the records of the living world. This quiz turns the best fun facts about gymnosperms into questions: the giants and the elders among trees, plants once thought lost that turned up alive, how cones and pollen do their work, and the surprising places these plants show up in kitchens, workshops, medicine and music. It suits biology students revising plant groups, gardeners, hikers and anyone who has ever picked up a cone and wondered about it. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can guess first and learn the story afterwards.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hyperion, a California tree more than 115 metres high, is the world's tallest known living example of which species?
Coast redwood
Coast redwood is the species, and Hyperion was only found in 2006, in a remote corner of a national park. Rangers closed the area in 2022 after visitors trampled the ground around it.
Q 02Six ginkgo trees near the blast survived the atomic bomb dropped in 1945 on which Japanese city?
Hiroshima
Hiroshima's ginkgos were charred by the blast but were soon healthy again. Japan calls such survivor trees hibakujumoku, and signs mark each one at its temple, garden or school site.
Q 03Juniper berries, really fleshy conifer cones rather than true fruit, give which spirit its signature flavour?
Gin
Gin is flavoured with juniper cones picked fully grown but unripe, while cooks prefer the ripe, dark ones. They are among the very few spices that come from a conifer.
Q 04Welwitschia, a desert gymnosperm that can live for many centuries, only ever grows how many leaves?
Two
Two leaves are all it ever makes, and they keep growing from the base for as long as the plant lives. Weather splits them into ribbons, so an old plant looks like a tangled heap.
Q 05Which gem, sometimes found with ancient insects sealed inside, is the fossilised resin of prehistoric trees?
Amber
Amber starts as soft, sticky resin, much of it from ancient conifers, which is how animals and plants end up sealed inside. The oldest pieces holding tiny mites are about 230 million years old.
Q 06Methuselah, a tree in California's White Mountains that sprouted around 2833 BC, belongs to which species?
Bristlecone pine
Bristlecone pine is the species, and Methuselah has the greatest confirmed age of any living tree that is not a clone. Its location was kept secret for years to protect it from damage.
Q 07The monkey puzzle, a spiky conifer named for a Victorian quip about climbing it, is which country's national tree?
Chile
Chile is the monkey puzzle's home, where its big round cones hold about 200 nut-like seeds each. The cones crumble apart when ripe instead of falling whole.
Q 08The fleshy seed coats that drop from female ginkgo trees are notorious for which foul smell?
Rancid butter
Rancid butter is the usual comparison, because the soft outer layer of each seed contains butyric acid. The stink only starts once the seeds have fallen.
Q 09Old Tjikko, a Swedish spruce with roots more than 9,500 years old, was named after which late pet of its finders?
Dog
A dog lent its name to the tree, chosen by the scientists who found it. The trunk is only a few centuries old, but the plant keeps sprouting new ones from ancient roots.
Q 10What does the name gymnosperm mean, built on the same classical root as the word gymnasium?
Naked seed
Naked seed is the meaning, because the seeds sit exposed on cone scales instead of inside a fruit. Ancient athletes trained unclothed, which gave the gymnasium the same root.
Q 11General Sherman, a giant sequoia in California, tops every other living single-stem tree on Earth by which measure?
Wood volume
Wood volume is the record, at an estimated 1,487 cubic metres in the trunk alone. Other trees are taller, wider or older, but none packs more timber into a single stem.
Q 12Pine nuts, which in Europe come mostly from the stone pine, are a classic ingredient of which Italian sauce?
Pesto
Pesto traditionally crushes pine nuts with basil, garlic, olive oil and hard cheese. Only about 20 pine species have seeds big enough to be worth trading.
Q 13In the timber trade, wood from conifers and other gymnosperms goes by which name, however tough it is?
Softwood
Q 21Ginkgo biloba, the last surviving species of an order about 270 million years old, grows wild only in which country?
China
China is its only wild home: ginkgo fossils vanish everywhere else, leaving one small central area where the species hung on. For centuries it was thought extinct in the wild.
Q 22Which genus in the pine family is deciduous, dropping every needle each year instead of staying evergreen?
Larch
Larch grows farther north than any other tree genus, reaching the tundra in Siberia and North America. It is one of the few conifers that go bare each year.
Q 23Conifers and other gymnosperms were the dominant plants of which era, popularly called the Age of the Dinosaurs?
Mesozoic
Softwood is a botanical label, not a hardness rating. Balsa, softer than most softwoods, counts as a hardwood because it comes from a flowering tree.
Q 14Pines, spruces and other conifers dominate which biome that stretches across Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia?
Taiga
Taiga, also called boreal forest or snow forest, is the largest biome on land. The word is Russian and is thought to come from Turkic or Mongolic roots.
Q 15A cedar, a conifer whose timber ancient Phoenicians used for shipbuilding, stands at the centre of which country's flag?
Lebanon
Lebanon adopted the flag in 1943 and fixed the design in 1990 as an all-green cedar between red stripes. Before that, the tree was often drawn with a brown trunk.
Q 16Many lodgepole pines of the Rocky Mountains keep their cones sealed shut for years until which event opens them?
A forest fire
A forest fire supplies the high heat these cones need, so a burned stand can reseed itself from the treetops. Botanists call the habit serotiny.
Q 17Bald cypress trees in American swamps send up woody growths from their roots named after which body part?
Knees
Knees is the name, and nobody is sure what they are for. The old idea that they carry oxygen to drowned roots has little evidence, and steadying the trunk now looks more likely.
Q 18Paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug sold as Taxol, was first isolated from the bark of which North American conifer?
Pacific yew
Pacific yew bark supplied almost all of the drug until 1993, and stripping it kills the tree. Chemists then turned to a compound from the needles of a European relative.
Q 19Which solvent, long used to thin oil paints, is distilled from the resin of living pine trees?
Turpentine
Turpentine boils off when pine resin is heated in a still, leaving solid rosin behind. Most of it is now a by-product of pulping wood for paper instead.
Q 20Ripe pine cones, which shed seeds that travel on the wind, respond to wet weather in which way?
They close up
They close up when wet and open again as they dry, because the scales flex with moisture. Seeds let go in dry weather travel farther from the parent tree.
Mesozoic forests belonged to gymnosperms until flowering plants appeared in the Early Cretaceous. By the end of the era the newcomers had replaced them as the dominant plants.
Q 24Ma huang, a gymnosperm shrub used as a traditional remedy for thousands of years, is the source of which stimulant?
Ephedrine
Ephedrine is named after Ephedra, the genus ma huang belongs to. American species of the same genus go by the name Mormon tea.
Q 25Welwitschia, among the longest-lived plants on Earth, grows wild only in which African desert?
Namib
Namib is its only home, along a long strip of shoreline in Angola and Namibia. The plant even appears on Namibia's coat of arms, growing from a sand dune.
Q 26Which Australian conifer was unknown to science until canyon explorers stumbled on a hidden grove in 1994?
Wollemi pine
Wollemi pine turned up in a gorge of the New South Wales park it is named after, and only a few dozen adults grow wild. Their exact location is kept from the public.
Q 27Rosin, the solid left behind when pine resin is distilled, is rubbed onto what to make it grip?
Violin bows
Violin bows are rubbed with rosin so the bow hair grips the strings and makes them sound. Baseball pitchers and ten-pin bowlers use the powder for a surer hold too.
Q 28The soft, splinter-free wood of incense cedar, a conifer of western North America, became a standard material for what?
Pencils
Pencils were long made of red cedar, and when supplies ran low, makers dyed and perfumed incense cedar to resemble it. The wood sharpens easily without forming splinters.
Q 29The huge, hooked cones of California's Coulter pine, which can weigh several kilograms, have earned which grim nickname?
Widowmakers
Widowmakers is the local name, and people working in Coulter pine groves are advised to wear hardhats. Only one other conifer bears heavier cones.
Q 30In which ancient epic do the heroes travel to a legendary Cedar Forest, kill its guardian and fell its trees?
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu make the journey in one of the earliest great works of literature. Real cedar was just as coveted: the Bible has Solomon send for it to build the Temple in Jerusalem.