Redwoods
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50 free Redwoods trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Redwoods hold records that sound made up. The coast redwood is the tallest tree on the planet, its cousin the giant sequoia is the most massive, and both can live for thousands of years. A third species, the dawn redwood, was thought to be long extinct until living trees turned up in the twentieth century. This quiz covers the trees themselves and the stories around them: how redwoods drink, reproduce and defend themselves, the animals that live in their branches and on the ground beneath, the named trees that draw visitors, and the parks and monuments that protect what is left. There are questions on the loggers, showmen and campaigners who shaped the history of the groves, and on the films that used them as a backdrop. It suits hikers planning a trip to Northern California, students of natural history, and anyone who has stood under one of these trees and wondered how it got so big. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a few facts worth repeating on the trail.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The world's tallest known living tree, a California coast redwood, bears which Greek Titan's name?
Hyperion
Hyperion grows in a remote corner of Redwood National Park, and the area around it was closed in 2022 after visitors trampled the ground at its base.
Q 02Which giant sequoia in California's Giant Forest is the largest living single-stem tree on Earth?
General Sherman
General Sherman was only confirmed as the biggest in 1931, after a comparison with a rival sequoia made wood volume the standard for ranking trees.
Q 03Coast redwoods can drink through their leaves and bark, absorbing which Pacific weather feature?
Summer fog
Summer fog also drips from the needles to the forest floor, where the roots take it up during California's long dry season.
Q 04Which activist spent 738 days up a California redwood named Luna to stop loggers felling the tree?
Julia Butterfly Hill
Julia Butterfly Hill came down in December 1999 only after Pacific Lumber agreed to spare the tree and a buffer of forest around it.
Q 05The Ewoks' forest moon of Endor was filmed among California's redwoods for which Star Wars movie?
Return of the Jedi
Return of the Jedi shot its Endor forest scenes in the far north of the state, including Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park.
Q 06Rare albino redwoods have white needles and feed off a parent tree because they lack which pigment?
Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll is what lets a tree make food from sunlight; albinos of other conifers die young, but a redwood albino can live as a parasite on its green parent.
Q 07The stump of the Discovery Tree, a giant sequoia felled at Calaveras, was turned into what?
A dance floor
A dance floor was the stump's new job: on July 4, 1853, thirty-two people danced cotillions on it, and a bowling alley was later built on the fallen trunk.
Q 08Which president signed an 1864 act protecting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove sequoias?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant in the middle of the Civil War, handing the valley and the grove to California to be kept as a state park.
Q 09The dawn redwood was known only from fossils until living trees were found in which country?
China
China's Hubei province holds most of the wild dawn redwoods, but seeds sent abroad in 1948 soon made the species a familiar park tree around the world.
Q 10Which American folk hero stands 49 feet tall at the Trees of Mystery redwood attraction?
Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan has greeted drivers there since 1961 beside a 35-foot Babe the Blue Ox; the first statue, built in 1946, was destroyed by a single winter's rain.
Q 11Wild coast redwoods grow almost entirely in California, plus a few groves in which other state?
Oregon
Oregon's redwoods stand along the Chetco River just over the state line, the northern tip of a narrow coastal strip that runs south to Big Sur.
Q 12Giant sequoias grow naturally only in scattered groves on the western slopes of which mountain range?
Sierra Nevada
Sierra Nevada groves stayed little known to settlers until 1852, when a grizzly hunter stumbled on one and his find soon drew tourists.
Q 13Which redwood national monument north of San Francisco was created from land donated by William Kent?
Muir Woods
Muir Woods was Kent's answer to a water company that wanted to dam the canyon, and he insisted the monument carry a naturalist's name, not his own.
Q 21In 1945, delegates drafting which body's charter honored Franklin D. Roosevelt in a redwood grove near San Francisco?
United Nations
United Nations delegates gathered in Cathedral Grove on May 19, 1945, weeks after the president's death, and left a plaque there in his memory.
Q 22Which president's wife has a grove in Redwood National Park named for her, dedicated by Richard Nixon in 1969?
Lady Bird Johnson
Lady Bird Johnson earned the honor for her work as First Lady to preserve the country's natural resources; her grove stands just north of Orick.
Q 23Redwood National and State Parks earned which international designation in 1980 for their rare ecosystem?
Q 14Which coast redwood in Leggett, California, has a tunnel cut through the trunk for cars to drive through?
Chandelier Tree
Chandelier Tree is named for the huge limbs that branch out 100 feet up; the tunnel was cut in the late 1930s to lure drivers off the Redwood Highway.
Q 15By a popular but unproven account, the name Sequoia honors Sequoyah, creator of which nation's script?
Cherokee
Cherokee is the language Sequoyah gave a syllabary, but the botanist who coined Sequoia in 1847 left no reason for the name, so the link is still argued over.
Q 16The coast redwood is Sequoia sempervirens; what does the Latin species name sempervirens mean?
Evergreen
Evergreen fits, and the Latin can also be read as everlasting, apt for a tree that regrows from its own stump when it is cut down.
Q 17Giant sequoia cones can stay closed for 20 years; which natural event opens them and clears ground for seedlings?
A wildfire
A wildfire dries the cones open and burns back the shade-loving rivals that would otherwise crowd out young sequoias.
Q 18Which knobbly woody growth on a coast redwood holds dormant buds that can sprout into whole new trees?
Burl
Burl wood is valuable enough that thieves have chainsawed the growths off ancient trees in Redwood National and State Parks.
Q 19Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park was a filming location for which Spielberg dinosaur film?
The Lost World
The Lost World began shooting there in September 1996, a spot picked because research suggested dinosaurs lived in forests like these, not tropical jungle.
Q 20A socialist colony logging near today's Sequoia National Park renamed the largest tree after which thinker?
Karl Marx
Karl Marx was the Kaweah Colony's choice, but the name did not outlast the colony, which broke up in 1892 after the national park was created; the tree got its old name back.
World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site status covers the national park and three state parks, which together protect almost half of the old-growth coast redwood forest left on Earth.
Q 24Before the National Park Service existed, which Black Army regiments patrolled Sequoia National Park?
Buffalo Soldiers
Buffalo Soldiers were sent because the young park had no money to hire civilians, and their road and trail work helped shape the modern park ranger's job.
Q 25A giant sequoia felled for New York's American Museum of Natural History was named for which humorist?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain's namesake took 13 days to bring down in 1891, and its stump still stands in Kings Canyon, where fifty men once posed on top of it.
Q 26The General Noble Tree, a giant sequoia cut into 46 sections, was shown at an 1893 world's fair in which city?
Chicago
Chicago fairgoers doubted that a tree so large could be real and nicknamed the exhibit the California Hoax; what was left behind is still called the Chicago Stump.
Q 27Which president proclaimed the General Grant Tree in Kings Canyon the Nation's Christmas Tree in 1926?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge gave the giant sequoia its title, and thirty years later Eisenhower made it a national shrine to the war dead, the only living thing so honored.
Q 28The largest unbroken old-growth redwood forest, in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, bears which family's name?
Rockefeller
Rockefeller Forest stands on land that once belonged to the Pacific Lumber Company and was only added to the park in the 1930s.
Q 29Which scenic road, a former stretch of US 101, runs beside the Eel River through Humboldt Redwoods State Park?
Avenue of the Giants
Avenue of the Giants links tiny towns such as Myers Flat and Weott, and each year runners race a marathon along it.
Q 30Which conservation group, founded in 1918, has helped create dozens of California's redwood parks and reserves?
Save the Redwoods League
Save the Redwoods League was started by three men shocked by the logging they saw on a 1917 trip, and it works by buying groves outright.