Succulents
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50 free Succulents trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Succulents have gone from desert curiosities to some of the most popular houseplants around. They store water in swollen leaves, stems or roots, which lets them shrug off weeks of neglect, and they come in shapes that barely look like plants at all: pebbles, rosettes, beads and spiny green columns. This quiz covers the plants themselves and the stories behind them. Expect questions on favourites such as aloe, agave, echeveria, kalanchoe, sedum and the euphorbias, the nicknames gardeners have given them, the tricks they use to survive drought, the wild places they come from, and the foods, drinks and fibres people have made from them. A few questions deal with everyday care, from watering to pests and propagation. It is written for plant lovers at every level, from someone with a single pot on the desk to collectors who know their Latin names. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up something new whatever you score.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lotions containing the clear gel of Aloe vera, a succulent from Arabia, are widely used to soothe which skin complaint?
Sunburn
Sunburn is the complaint most people reach for aloe to calm, though studies disagree on how much it helps. The gel cannot protect skin from burning again.
Q 02Which spirit, named after a town in Jalisco, may be made from only one kind of agave, the blue Weber variety?
Tequila
Tequila is a slow crop: a blue agave grows for years before its heart is cut out, baked and fermented, and each plant can be harvested only once.
Q 03Which Christmas houseplant belongs to Euphorbia, a genus that also holds many spiny succulents mistaken for cacti?
Poinsettia
Poinsettia hides a second surprise: its red 'petals' are really coloured leaves called bracts, which only change colour after weeks of long, dark nights.
Q 04Crassula ovata, a tree-like succulent with shiny oval leaves, is also known as the money tree and by which other name?
Jade plant
Jade plant earns its tree-like look slowly: the trunk thickens and turns brown with age, which has made it a favourite subject for indoor bonsai.
Q 05Agaves and yuccas, for all their sword-like leaves, sit in a family the APG system names after which vegetable?
Asparagus
Asparagus gives its name to the family Asparagaceae, which swallowed the old agave family in a 2009 reshuffle and also takes in bluebells and hostas.
Q 06Sempervivum, a frost-hardy succulent whose Latin name means always alive, is commonly sold under which farmyard name?
Hen and chicks
Hen and chicks describes how the plant spreads: each parent rosette, the hen, surrounds itself with a brood of smaller rosettes, and each one can be split off to grow alone.
Q 07The trimmed heart of an agave, baked to make spirits, is called a piña, the Spanish word for which fruit?
Pineapple
Pineapple is what the heart resembles once a harvester has sliced off every spiky leaf, and a single one can weigh as much as a grown adult.
Q 08Stapelia, an African succulent with large hairy flowers, smells of rotting meat to attract which pollinators?
Flies
Flies are fooled so completely that blow flies often lay their eggs on the bloom, a trick that has earned Stapelia the name carrion flower.
Q 09Aloe vera was among the houseplants tested for cleaning indoor air in a 1989 study led by which agency?
NASA
NASA was hunting for ways to freshen the air inside sealed habitats. An ordinary building would need a jungle of at least ten plants per square metre to match its own ventilation.
Q 10Houseleeks were long planted on which part of a house, a custom Charlemagne endorsed, to ward off thunderstorms?
The roof
The roof is written into the plant's scientific name: Sempervivum tectorum means the houseleek of rooftops, and the custom goes back to Roman times.
Q 11Agave americana, which actually lives for only 10 to 30 years, is misleadingly known by which common name?
Century plant
Century plant flowers just once, at the very end of its life, sending up a blossoming stalk that can tower 8 metres before the rosette dies.
Q 12Which West African houseplant with stiff, upright, sharp-edged leaves was once a source of fibre for making bowstrings?
Snake plant
Snake plant leaves are so tough that their fibres were once twisted into bowstrings, which gave the species yet another name: viper's bowstring hemp.
Q 13Lithops, tiny southern African succulents that hide from grazing animals among gravel, go by which nickname?
Living stones
Q 21Many succulents multiply by sprouting small daughter plants at their base, offsets that US gardeners call what?
Pups
Pups are virtually complete plants made without any seed, so each one is a clone of its parent that can be cut away and potted up alone.
Q 22Which Kalanchoe, also called the alligator plant, is named for the rows of baby plantlets along its leaf edges?
Mother of thousands
Mother of thousands drops plantlets that have already grown roots while still on the leaf, and every part of the plant contains a potent toxin.
Q 23Sedum morganianum, a Mexican succulent with trailing stems of blue-green leaves, is named after which animal's tail?
Burro
Living stones fooled even the explorer who first described them: in 1811 William Burchell found one only because he bent to pick up a curiously shaped pebble.
Q 14Flaming Katy, a Kalanchoe widely sold as a flowering houseplant, grows wild in the cool mountains of which large island?
Madagascar
Madagascar holds about 60 of the roughly 125 Kalanchoe species, and its cool mountain plateaus, not a hot desert, are the natural home of flaming Katy.
Q 15The Succulent Karoo, home to a third of the world's succulent species, runs from South Africa into which neighbour?
Namibia
Namibia shares the desert's unlikely water supply: the cold Benguela Current just offshore rolls frequent fogs over the coastal strip where the plants grow.
Q 16Many succulents open their pores only after dark to take in which gas, storing it as acid until morning?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide gathered in the cool of night lets the plant keep its pores shut through the heat of the day, so far less water escapes.
Q 17African euphorbias and American cacti look alike without being closely related, a classic case of which process?
Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution handed two unrelated families the same drought kit of swollen green stems and sharp spines, which is why euphorbias are so often mistaken for cacti.
Q 18Euphorbia succulents, unlike the cacti they resemble, bleed which poisonous white fluid when a stem is cut?
Latex
Latex evolved to put off browsing animals, and it works on gardeners too: a splash on the skin or in an eye can cause painful inflammation.
Q 19Yellowing leaves that turn soft and mushy are a warning that a potted succulent is suffering from which care mistake?
Overwatering
Overwatering drowns the roots: waterlogged soil holds too little oxygen, so they die and rot. The cure is to let the pot dry out completely between drinks.
Q 20A potted succulent that stretches into tall, pale, lanky growth is showing that it needs more of what?
Light
Light is what the plant is reaching for: rosettes even flatten their leaves to catch more of it, and indoor succulents do best with ten or more bright hours a day.
Burro, or donkey, tail sheds its leaves at the gentlest brush, but the loss is no disaster: each fallen leaf can root where it lands and grow a new plant.
Q 24Curio rowleyanus, a trailing South African succulent in the daisy family, is best known by which common name?
String of pearls
String of pearls carries leaves the size and shape of small peas on stems that can trail for nearly a metre, and it was long filed under Senecio, the ragworts.
Q 25Kalanchoe tomentosa, with velvety silver-green leaves rimmed in brown, is sold under the name of which animal?
Panda
Panda plant owes its soft coat to a dense felt of fine silvery hairs, and its dark-edged leaves have earned it a second nickname: chocolate soldier.
Q 26Haworthiopsis attenuata, a small succulent whose leaves carry bands of white bumps, is named after which animal?
Zebra
Zebra haworthia wears its stripes on both faces of every leaf, the detail that separates it from a look-alike cousin whose upper leaf surface is smooth.
Q 27Euphorbia obesa, a round, spineless succulent prized by collectors, is nicknamed after the ball of which sport?
Baseball
Baseball plant grows so slowly, and sets only two or three seeds in each pod, that poaching has left it endangered in the wild.
Q 28Euphorbia milii, a popular houseplant with small red blooms, takes its common name from which biblical object?
Crown of thorns
Crown of thorns reached France in 1821 thanks to Baron Milius, the governor of Réunion whose name it carries; legend ties the plant to the crucifixion.
Q 29A cultivar of Crassula ovata with odd tubular, red-tinged leaves is named after which Lord of the Rings character?
Gollum
Gollum has a sister cultivar named Hobbit, and the pair's strange tube-shaped leaves have also been nicknamed ogre's ears and ET's fingers.
Q 30Spekboom, a small-leaved South African succulent shrub, takes its English name from which large animals that feed on it?
Elephants
Elephants are only one of its fans: spekboom, or elephant bush, also feeds black rhinos, and it puts on growth faster than the local rainfall would seem to allow.