Houseplant Trivia
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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
Southern Mexico to Panama is the natural range of Monstera deliciosa, which climbs rainforest trees there; the genus name comes from the Latin for 'monstrous', a nod to its size and naturally holed leaves.
Q 02What does the specific epithet 'deliciosa' in Monstera deliciosa refer to?
Its edible fruit
Its edible fruit earned the species the name deliciosa: when fully ripe it tastes like a mix of pineapple and banana, but unripe fruit is full of needle-like calcium oxalate crystals.
Q 03Golden pothos is native to which island?
Mo'orea in French Polynesia
Mo'orea in French Polynesia, in the Society Islands, is the native home of Epipremnum aureum; despite names like Ceylon creeper and Solomon Islands ivy, it has merely gone wild across the tropics.
Q 04Why is pothos nicknamed 'devil's ivy'?
It stays green even when kept in the dark
It stays green even when kept in the dark and is almost impossible to kill, hence 'devil's ivy'; the plant almost never flowers in cultivation because of a defect in its gibberellin hormone production.
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
Sansevieria was its genus until molecular studies folded it into Dracaena in 2017; it is native to tropical West Africa from Nigeria to the Congo.
Q 07When does Dracaena trifasciata open its stomata to exchange gases?
Only at night
Only at night: it uses crassulacean acid metabolism, a drought adaptation shared with many succulents, keeping stomata shut by day to save water and opening them after dark to take in carbon dioxide.
Q 08Which houseplant's tough leaf fibres earned it the old name 'bowstring hemp'?
Snake plant
Snake plant leaves yield a strong fibre 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
No, it is an aroid in the family Araceae, a cousin of the philodendrons; unlike true lilies, which cause kidney failure in cats, it is only mildly irritating thanks to calcium oxalate crystals.
Q 10The white 'petal' of a peace lily is actually what?
A spathe, a modified leaf
A spathe, a modified leaf, surrounds the spadix that carries the real flowers; 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
A fiddle is the resemblance behind 'fiddle-leaf fig', whose violin-shaped leaves can reach 45 cm long; the species grows wild in lowland forests from Sierra Leone to Cameroon.
Q 12In which decade did Ficus lyrata become a houseplant craze?
The 2010s
The 2010s made the fiddle-leaf fig the decade's 'it' plant, a fixture of design magazines and Instagram interiors; indoors it stays smaller and rarely flowers or fruits.
Q 13In Meghalaya, India, the roots of Ficus elastica are trained into what?
Living bridges
Living bridges: Khasi and Jaintia villagers guide the aerial roots of Ficus elastica across streams over decades until they knit into walkable spans; the rubber plant was once tapped for latex but plays no part in commercial rubber 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 22Which nickname does the jade plant, Crassula ovata, share with the Malabar chestnut, Pachira aquatica?
Money tree
Money tree is a nickname both the jade plant and Pachira aquatica carry, each sold as a bringer of wealth; Crassula ovata is a succulent in the stonecrop family, while Pachira is a mallow relative.
Q 23Which Norwegian missionary carried the Chinese money plant out of Yunnan in the 1940s?
Agnar Espegren
Q 14Aloe vera originates in which region?
The Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is where Aloe vera is thought to have originated; it has been grown around the Mediterranean for millennia, 'vera' means 'true' in Latin, and the gel is rich in the polysaccharide acemannan.
Q 15The ZZ plant stores water in what kind of underground structure?
A potato-like rhizome
A potato-like rhizome beneath the soil stores water, letting the ZZ plant ride out months of drought in its native eastern Africa; the fleshy leaf stalks store more.
Q 16Which nurseries began propagating the ZZ plant on a wide commercial scale around 1996?
Dutch
Dutch nurseries started propagating Zamioculcas zamiifolia on a wide commercial scale around 1996; its other names include Zanzibar gem and eternity plant, and the foliage resembles the cycad Zamia.
Q 17The name Philodendron comes from Greek words meaning what?
Love tree
Love tree, from Greek philo (love) and dendron (tree), describes how many species climb trees as hemiepiphytes; the genus is the second-largest in the arum family.
Q 18What is the largest genus in the arum family, ahead of Philodendron?
Anthurium
Anthurium, with roughly 1,000 species native from Mexico to Argentina, many of them epiphytes, is the arum family's largest genus; the glossy red 'flamingo flower' is its best-known houseplant.
Q 19African violets are native to which country?
Tanzania
Tanzania's Usambara Mountains are where Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire collected the seeds he sent home in 1892; the genus was named Saintpaulia after him, and it is unrelated to true violets.
Q 20The orchid genus Phalaenopsis is named for its resemblance to what?
A moth
A moth is the resemblance: Carl Ludwig Blume, who described the genus in 1825, thought the flowers looked like moths in flight; most species grow as epiphytes from Indonesia to the Philippines.
Agnar Espegren took cuttings home to Norway via India in 1946, and the plant spread across Scandinavia by hand; Kew botanists only identified it in the 1980s.
Q 24Pilea peperomioides is a relative of which familiar plant?
Nettles
Nettles are its kin: Pilea belongs to the nettle family Urticaceae, though it lacks stinging hairs; its round leaves earn it names like UFO plant and pancake plant, and it grows wild only in Yunnan and Sichuan.
Q 25String of pearls, Curio rowleyanus, is botanically a relative of which plant?
Daisies
Daisies are its relatives: the plant sits in the aster family Asteraceae and was long called Senecio rowleyanus; the creeping succulent from the Cape provinces is named for British succulent specialist Gordon Rowley.
Q 26The poinsettia takes its English name from whom?
The first US minister to Mexico
The first US minister to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, sent the plant north in the 1820s; the Aztecs had cultivated it, calling it cuetlaxochitl.
Q 27What is the truth about poinsettia toxicity for pets and children?
It is not dangerous, despite its reputation
It is not dangerous, despite its reputation: a review of more than 20,000 poison-centre cases found no fatalities, and the worst effects are mild stomach upset or skin irritation from the milky sap.
Q 28Aglaonema, grown for centuries in Asia as a luck-bringer, is commonly called what?
Chinese evergreen
Chinese evergreen is the trade name for Aglaonema, native to the 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
Trichomes, tiny scale-like hairs coating the leaves, pull moisture and nutrients straight from the air; the roots mostly serve as anchors, and the genus of about 650 species includes Spanish moss.
Q 30Why is Dieffenbachia called 'dumb cane'?
Its raphides can cause temporary inability to speak
Its raphides can cause temporary inability to speak: chewing the plant drives needle-like calcium oxalate crystals into the mouth, swelling tongue and throat; the genus honours Joseph Dieffenbach, head gardener at Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace.