50 free Houseplant trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Why does a monstera have holes? Which houseplant breathes at night? Who smuggled the Chinese money plant to Norway in a suitcase? This houseplant trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers about the plants on your windowsill: monstera, pothos, snake plant, spider plant, peace lily, fiddle-leaf fig, rubber plant, ZZ plant, philodendron, African violet, moth orchid, Boston fern, jade plant, string of pearls, poinsettia, air plants and more. The questions mix identification and origins with the science of keeping things alive indoors: etiolation, root rot, fungus gnats, why succulents open their stomata after dark, and what the famous NASA clean-air study did and did not show. There is history too, from Wardian cases and Victorian fern mania to Boston fern shipments and Dutch nurseries. It suits a plant-swap party, a garden-club round, or a quiet test of whether you know your Ficus lyrata from your Ficus elastica. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on each species and topic, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where is Monstera deliciosa native to?
Southern Mexico to Panama
The genus name comes from the Latin for 'monstrous', a nod to the naturally holed leaves. The ripe fruit is edible and reportedly tastes like fruit salad.
Q 02What does the specific epithet 'deliciosa' in Monstera deliciosa refer to?
Its edible fruit
The unripe fruit is full of needle-like calcium oxalate crystals, so patience matters.
Q 03Golden pothos is native to which island?
Mo'orea in French Polynesia
Despite names like Ceylon creeper and Solomon Islands ivy, it comes from the Society Islands and has gone wild across the tropics.
Q 04Why is pothos nicknamed 'devil's ivy'?
It stays green even when kept in the dark
It is also very hard to kill. The plant rarely flowers in cultivation without hormone treatment; a spontaneous flowering was last reported in 1964.
Q 05Where does the spider plant, Chlorophytum comosum, come from?
South Africa
Carl Peter Thunberg first described it in 1794 in his work on the plants of the Cape. The dangling plantlets root wherever they touch soil.
Q 06Dracaena trifasciata, or mother-in-law's tongue, was known under what genus name until 2017?
Sansevieria
It is native to tropical West Africa from Nigeria to the Congo, and its fibers were once used to make bowstrings.
Q 07When does Dracaena trifasciata open its stomata to exchange gases?
Only at night
It uses crassulacean acid metabolism, a drought adaptation shared with many succulents, which is why it is said to 'breathe' after dark.
Q 08Which houseplant is also known as 'viper's bowstring hemp'?
Snake plant
Its leaves yield a strong fiber once used for bowstrings; the same plant is called mother-in-law's tongue and Saint George's sword.
Q 09Is the peace lily a true lily?
No, it is an aroid in the family Araceae
Unlike true lilies, which can cause kidney failure in cats, it is only mildly toxic thanks to calcium oxalate crystals.
Q 10The white 'petal' of a peace lily is actually what?
A spathe, a modified leaf
The real flowers sit on the spadix inside it. Heinrich Wilhelm Schott named the genus Spathiphyllum, literally 'leaf spathe', in 1832.
Q 11Ficus lyrata's common name comes from its leaves resembling which object?
A fiddle
The leaves can reach 45 cm long. It grows in moist lowland forests from Sierra Leone to Cameroon.
Q 12In which decade did Ficus lyrata become a houseplant craze?
The 2010s
Indoors in temperate regions it stays smaller and rarely flowers or fruits.
Q 13In Meghalaya, India, the roots of Ficus elastica are trained into what?
Living bridges
The rubber plant was once tapped for rubber in its native range but plays no part in modern commercial production.
Q 21The Boston fern's arching-frond mutation was discovered in an 1894 shipment from which city?
Philadelphia
The species itself grows wild in humid forests from Florida to South America; only the 'Bostoniensis' form arches gracefully.
Q 22The jade plant, Crassula ovata, is native to which country?
South Africa
Yellowish leaves come from carotenoid pigments made to protect it from harsh sun. It shares the nickname 'money tree' with Pachira aquatica.
Q 23Which Norwegian missionary carried the Chinese money plant out of Yunnan in the 1940s?
Agnar Espegren
He took cuttings home via India in 1946 and it spread across Scandinavia by hand. Kew botanists only identified it in the 1980s.
Q 14Aloe vera originates in which region?
The Arabian Peninsula
The species name 'vera' means 'true' in Latin. The gel is rich in the polysaccharide acemannan.
Q 15The ZZ plant stores water in what kind of underground structure?
A potato-like rhizome
Native to eastern Africa, it only went into wide commercial production in the mid-1990s.
Q 16Which nurseries began propagating the ZZ plant on a wide commercial scale around 1996?
Dutch
Its other names include Zanzibar gem, eternity plant and aroid palm; the foliage resembles the cycad Zamia.
Q 17The name Philodendron comes from Greek words meaning what?
Love tree
Many species climb trees as hemiepiphytes. It is the second-largest genus in the arum family.
Q 18What is the largest genus in the arum family, ahead of Philodendron?
Anthurium
Roughly 1,000 species, native from Mexico to Argentina, many growing as epiphytes. The 'flower' is a colored spathe under a spadix.
Q 19African violets are native to which country?
Tanzania
Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire sent seeds home from the Usambara Mountains in 1892. They are not related to true violets.
Q 20The orchid genus Phalaenopsis is named for its resemblance to what?
A moth
Carl Ludwig Blume described it in 1825; most species grow in Indonesia and the Philippines as epiphytes.
Q 24Pilea peperomioides is a relative of which familiar plant?
Nettles
Its round leaves earn it names like UFO plant, pancake plant and lefse plant. It grows wild only in Yunnan and Sichuan.
Q 25String of pearls, Curio rowleyanus, is botanically a relative of which plant?
Daisies
The creeping succulent from the Cape provinces was named for British succulent specialist Gordon Rowley.
Q 26The poinsettia takes its English name from whom?
The first US minister to Mexico
Joel Roberts Poinsett introduced it to the US in the 1820s. The Aztecs had cultivated it for medicine, and there is a push to revive the Nahuatl name cuetlaxochitl.
Q 27What is the truth about poinsettia toxicity for pets and children?
It is not dangerous, despite its reputation
Paul Ecke Ranch grows about half the world's supply and 70 percent of the US market.
Q 28Aglaonema, grown for centuries in Asia as a luck-bringer, is commonly called what?
Chinese evergreen
The genus is native to humid, shady forests of tropical Asia and New Guinea, which is why it tolerates dim rooms.
Q 29Air plants, Tillandsia, absorb water through what specialized structures on their leaves?
Trichomes
Their roots mostly serve as anchors. The genus of about 650 species includes Spanish moss.
Q 30Why is Dieffenbachia called 'dumb cane'?
Its raphides can cause temporary inability to speak
The genus honors Joseph Dieffenbach, head gardener at Vienna's botanical garden. In Costa Rica, poison frogs deposit tadpoles in its leaf axils.