Orange Trivia
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49 free Orange trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This orange trivia quiz starts with the fruit (a hybrid of mandarin and pomelo first mentioned in Chinese writing in 314 BC), moves to the colour that took its name from it, and then follows the word wherever it went: the House of Orange and the Dutch national colour, the Roman city in Provence, the Orange Free State and Orange River, Agent Orange, the Orange Bowl and A Clockwork Orange. Along the way you will find out where the navel orange was born, why Louis XIV confiscated a thousand trees, how the letter n fell off the front of the word, why Dutch carrots are orange, what makes a blood orange bleed, and which mineral gave ancient painters their orange before the fruit had reached Europe. Easy questions sit beside genuinely hard ones so a family or a pub team can play the same set. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the fruit, the colour and the related people and places, and each question quotes the sentence that supports it.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Botanically, the sweet orange is a hybrid between the mandarin and which other citrus fruit?
Pomelo
Genome analysis puts it at roughly 42% pomelo and 58% mandarin; the grapefruit in turn arose from a sweet orange crossed back with pomelo.
Q 02The earliest known mention of the sweet orange, from 314 BC, appears in the literature of which country?
China
The fruit was domesticated in a region spanning southern China, northeast India and Myanmar; it does not exist in the wild.
Q 03Which country produced the most oranges in 2024, about 23% of the world total?
Brazil
About 67 million tonnes were grown worldwide, with China and Mexico next.
Q 04Oranges sit on a chest and windowsill in which famous Jan van Eyck painting?
The Arnolfini Portrait
In the Arnolfini Portrait, oranges rest on the chest and windowsill beside the couple, a sign of wealth in 1434 Bruges; Botticelli later set his Primavera in an orange grove.
Q 05What did Louis XIV confiscate from Nicolas Fouquet's estate after condemning him in 1664?
Over 1,000 orange trees
Louis XIV seized over 1,000 orange trees from Fouquet's estate at Vaux-le-Vicomte and added them to his own collection, later housed in the great Orangerie at Versailles.
Q 06Which explorer may have planted the first oranges in the Americas, on Hispaniola in 1493?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus is thought to have planted the first orange trees in the Americas on Hispaniola in 1493, on his second voyage; Spanish expeditions later carried the fruit to Mexico and Florida.
Q 07Which Riverside, California woman planted two navel orange cuttings in 1873, founding the state's citrus industry?
Eliza Tibbets
Eliza Tibbets planted two navel orange trees sent by the USDA from Washington in 1873; fruit from her Riverside trees became the Washington navel, the foundation of California's citrus industry.
Q 08The word 'orange' ultimately traces back to which language family?
Dravidian
The root is Dravidian (Tamil nāram, Telugu nāriṃja); it travelled through Sanskrit nāraṅga, Persian nārang and Arabic nāranj before reaching Old French as pomme d'orenge.
Q 09What is the process called by which French 'une norenge' was reheard as 'une orenge'?
Juncture loss
This is juncture loss, also called rebracketing: English 'an apron' (from 'a napron') and 'an adder' (from 'a nadder') were reshaped the same way.
Q 10The earliest recorded English use of 'orange' as a colour name, in 1502, described what?
Clothing bought for Margaret Tudor
The Oxford English Dictionary's first citation of orange as a colour word, from 1502, describes clothing bought for Margaret Tudor, Henry VII's daughter, who married James IV of Scotland in 1503.
Q 11Before the fruit gave the colour its English name, what was the colour usually called?
Yellow-red
Old English speakers called the colour yellow-red, ġeolurēad, and used ġeolucrog, 'yellow-saffron', for the yellower shades; 'orange' became an English colour word only in the early 1500s.
Q 12Human eyes see orange when light has a dominant wavelength in roughly which range?
585–620 nanometres
Orange spans roughly 585–620 nanometres, between yellow (about 570–590) and red (above 620) on the visible spectrum; in the HSV colour space its hue is 30 degrees.
Q 13In painting, which colour is traditionally treated as the complement of orange?
Blue
Q 21The Orange River, South Africa's longest, rises in the Drakensberg mountains of which country?
Lesotho
The Orange rises in the Lesotho highlands, the Drakensberg–Maloti range, and runs 2,432 km west to the Atlantic; Oranjemund in Namibia sits at its mouth.
Q 22The 2004 'Orange Revolution' carried reformer Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency of which country?
Ukraine
Ukraine's Orange Revolution, weeks of protests in Kyiv in November–December 2004 over a rigged run-off, forced a re-vote that Viktor Yushchenko won.
Q 23The flag of New York City carries an orange stripe in memory of whom?
The Dutch colonists who founded it
Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about seeking 'the oppositions of blue with orange'; the strict optical complement is closer to azure.
Q 14The orange colour of carrots, pumpkins and oranges comes from which pigments?
Carotenes
Carotenes, chiefly beta-carotene, colour carrots, pumpkins and orange peel; the same carotenoid pigments show through in autumn leaves once the chlorophyll breaks down.
Q 15Which famous structure is painted 'international orange' to make it more visible in fog?
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge has worn 'international orange' since it opened in 1937; consulting architect Irving Morrow chose the shade because it stands out against the bay's fog.
Q 16Orange is the national colour of which country?
Netherlands
Orange is the Dutch national colour, taken from the royal House of Orange-Nassau; the heir apparent to the Netherlands' throne bears the title Prince or Princess of Orange.
Q 17The House of Orange takes its name from a tiny principality just north of which French city?
Avignon
The Principality of Orange, about 108 square miles around the town of Orange just north of Avignon, passed to William the Silent in 1544, giving the House of Orange-Nassau its name.
Q 18What was the Latin name of the Roman colony at Orange in Provence, founded by legion veterans?
Arausio
Arausio, founded around 35 BC for veterans of the Second Legion, became modern Orange; its first-century theatre is among the best preserved Roman theatres and hosts the Chorégies d'Orange festival.
Q 19Which soft-drink brand, famous for its orange flavour, did Coca-Cola's German arm create in 1940?
Fanta
Fanta was created in 1940 by Max Keith of Coca-Cola Deutschland when wartime embargoes cut off Coke syrup; the orange version was first made in Naples, Italy, in 1955.
Q 20In which year was the Protestant Orange Order founded in County Armagh?
1795
The Orange Order was founded in 1795 at Loughgall, County Armagh, after the Battle of the Diamond; it commemorates William of Orange's victory at the Boyne in 1690.
Nassau County, next door, is named after the House of Orange-Nassau for the same reason.
Q 24In Confucianism, orange was regarded as the colour of what?
Transformation
Confucian tradition treated orange as the colour of transformation, lying between red and yellow; in China the colour took its name from saffron, the finest dye in Asia, not from the fruit.
Q 25The Orange Bowl college football game has been played every year since 1935 in which metropolitan area?
Miami
The Orange Bowl has been played in the Miami area since January 1, 1935, first at Miami Field, then for decades at the Orange Bowl stadium, and later at the Dolphins' stadium in Miami Gardens.
Q 26Agent Orange belonged to a group of Vietnam War defoliants known collectively as what?
Rainbow Herbicides
Agent Orange was one of the 'Rainbow Herbicides', colour-coded by the stripe on their drums (Agents Pink, Purple, White, Blue); they were sprayed under Operation Ranch Hand from 1962 to 1971.
Q 27The crimson flesh of a blood orange comes from which pigments, unusual in citrus?
Anthocyanins
Anthocyanins, the pigments of red grapes and berries but rare in citrus, colour blood-orange flesh; the red develops only when the fruit grows through cold nights and deepens in cold storage.
Q 28British marmalade is traditionally made from which bitter orange, nearly all of which Spain exports to Britain?
Seville
Seville oranges, bitter and rich in pectin, set a firm marmalade; Spain's Seville crop is too sour for eating and much of it is shipped to Britain for preserving.
Q 29Which Dundee woman is credited with first adding pieces of peel to marmalade in the 1790s?
Janet Keiller
Janet Keiller of Dundee is credited with adding chunks of peel to marmalade in 1797; her son James founded James Keiller & Son, one of the first commercial marmalade makers.
Q 30The dried peel of the laraha, a bitter-orange subspecies, is used to flavour which liqueur?
Curaçao
Curaçao liqueur is flavoured with the dried peel of the laraha, a bitter orange grown on the Caribbean island of Curaçao; the laraha's pulp is too bitter to eat.