Temperate Forests
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40 free Temperate Forests trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Temperate forests grow between the tropics and the cold far north and south, where the year swings through warm summers and cool winters. They include the leafy woods of Europe, eastern North America and East Asia, the towering conifer stands of the American west coast, and the dripping, moss-hung rainforests of places as far apart as Canada, Chile and New Zealand. This quiz turns fun facts about temperate forests into questions. It covers record-breaking trees, the animals and birds that live beneath them on several continents, the ways these forests feed and renew themselves, and the films, legends and campaigns they have inspired. It suits students working on a biome project, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone who likes a walk in the woods. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each question leaves you with a fact worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Star Wars film shot its forest moon of Endor scenes among the giant redwoods of northern California?
Return of the Jedi
Return of the Jedi used the redwoods as the home of the Ewoks. Backgrounds for the speeder chase were filmed by walking a camera through the trees at about 5 mph, then played back to look like 120 mph.
Q 02Which vampire saga is set in Forks, a rainy logging town surrounded by the temperate rainforest of Washington state?
Twilight
Twilight turned Forks, where more than 100 inches of rainfall soak the woods each year, from a timber town into a destination for fans.
Q 03Which burrowing marsupial of the forests of south-eastern Australia is famous for leaving cube-shaped droppings?
Wombat
Wombat droppings are stacked to mark territory, and the flat sides are thought to stop them rolling away. Research into how the cubes form won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2019.
Q 04Which mollusc of the redwood forests is the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz?
Banana slug
Banana slug became the mascot after a student vote, and Reader's Digest named it the best college mascot in 2004. The largest of these slugs can reach 25 centimetres long.
Q 05Which mammal of Himalayan temperate forests gave the Firefox web browser its name?
Red panda
Red panda is the animal behind the name, since firefox is one of its nicknames, although the browser's logo shows a fox. It is not closely related to the giant panda, which is a bear.
Q 06Which flightless bird of New Zealand's forests is the only bird with nostrils at the tip of its beak?
Kiwi
Kiwi sniff out worms and insects underground with those nostrils, without seeing or touching them. A single egg can weigh up to a fifth of the female that lays it.
Q 07Which bird of south-eastern Australia's wet forests can imitate chainsaws, car alarms and camera shutters?
Lyrebird
Lyrebird song mixes the bird's own notes with mimicry of other species and of machines. Recordings also include copies of crying babies, barking dogs and mobile-phone ring tones.
Q 08Which US state has a honey mushroom colony covering 3.5 square miles of forest, possibly Earth's largest organism?
Oregon
Oregon's Malheur National Forest hides the colony, nicknamed the humongous fungus, which lives mostly underground. It may weigh as much as 35,000 tons.
Q 09Which Studio Ghibli film took its forest setting from the ancient mossy woods of Japan's Yakushima island?
Princess Mononoke
Princess Mononoke borrowed the look of Yakushima, a World Heritage island whose most famous sugi tree is reckoned to be more than 2,000 years old.
Q 10Which fish, carried into the woods by bears, ends up fertilising the trees of Pacific temperate rainforests?
Salmon
Salmon bring ocean nutrients inland when they swim upriver to spawn and die. Bears, otters and ospreys drag the carcasses ashore, where they rot and feed the forest.
Q 11Which California sequoia, named after a Civil War commander, is the largest living single-stem tree by volume?
General Sherman
General Sherman stands in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park. It was confirmed as the biggest tree in the world in 1931, after being measured against a nearby rival.
Q 12Which wooded German region is known for cuckoo clocks and gives its name to a cherry and chocolate cake?
Black Forest
Black Forest gateau is made with chocolate cake, cream, sour cherries and kirsch, a cherry spirit from the same hills. The region is also the home of a well-known ham.
Q 13Giant sequoias depend on which natural force to dry open their cones and clear the ground for their seedlings?
Fire
Q 21Which bristly forest animal of Europe and Asia is the ancestor of most breeds of farmyard pig?
Wild boar
Wild boar piglets wear pale bands along their flanks and back, a coat that changes as they age. People have hunted the adults as big game for thousands of years.
Q 22Monarch butterflies from eastern North America spend each winter clustered on highland forest trees in which country?
Mexico
Mexico shelters the butterflies on volcanic peaks in the centre of the country, where they roost on oyamel trees until March. The journey south covers thousands of kilometres.
Q 23What is the English name for shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of unwinding by spending quiet time among trees?
Forest bathing
Fire dries the cones so they shed their seeds, and it clears the litter and rival plants that would smother a seedling. A sequoia cone can otherwise stay green and closed for 20 years.
Q 14Which towering conifer of the Pacific Northwest, despite its common name, is not a true fir at all?
Douglas fir
Douglas fir belongs to a separate genus from the true firs, and its cones hang down rather than standing upright. It yields more timber than any other tree in North America.
Q 15Which US national park protects the Hoh Rainforest, where about 140 inches of precipitation fall in a typical year?
Olympic
Olympic National Park, in Washington state, holds rainforest valleys that may be the wettest area in the continental United States. Unlike tropical rainforests, they are dominated by conifers.
Q 16Which threatened bird became the symbol of the fight over logging old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest?
Spotted owl
Spotted owl habitat was at the heart of the timber wars, and a court order halted logging in its national forests in 1991. The bird also loses food and territory to an invading relative, the barred owl.
Q 17Which flightless, nocturnal parrot of New Zealand's forests is the heaviest parrot in the world?
Kakapo
Kakapo is also the only parrot that cannot fly, and it weighs about 400 grams more than the largest flying parrot, the hyacinth macaw.
Q 18Which weather feature keeps California's redwoods supplied with moisture through the dry summer months?
Coastal fog
Coastal fog condenses on the needles and drips to the ground, topping up the soil in the dry season. Redwoods can also take in the moisture directly through their bark.
Q 19The Appalachian Trail runs almost 2,200 miles through forested hills from Georgia to Mount Katahdin in which state?
Maine
Maine holds the northern end of the trail, which crosses 14 states and is hiked in part by more than three million people a year.
Q 20Which stocky, screeching animal became the world's largest carnivorous marsupial after the thylacine died out in 1936?
Tasmanian devil
Tasmanian devil is a forest hunter and scavenger about the size of a small dog. Its fame abroad owes most to Taz, the whirling Looney Tunes character it inspired in 1954.
Forest bathing has nothing to do with water. The term was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama, a director at Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Q 24The Colchic rainforests of Georgia grow in the land where Jason and the Argonauts sought which legendary prize?
Golden Fleece
Golden Fleece legends placed the prize in Colchis, in what is now western Georgia. The region's rainforests and wetlands became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
Q 25Which Scottish-born naturalist and wilderness campaigner has a redwood grove near San Francisco named after him?
John Muir
John Muir, known as the Father of the National Parks, was honoured at the insistence of William Kent, who bought the grove to save it from loggers and gave it to the nation.
Q 26What name, taken from a Titan of Greek myth, was given to the tallest known living tree, a California redwood?
Hyperion
Hyperion was found in 2006 by two naturalists in a remote corner of Redwood National Park. The same park holds other giants named Helios, Icarus and Daedalus.
Q 27Which New Zealand forest plant is the emblem worn by the national rugby team?
Silver fern
Silver fern fronds were laid pale side up by Māori hunters to mark a path home at night, because the undersides catch the moonlight. New Zealand players first wore the emblem on an 1888 tour.
Q 28Which rot-resistant tree did First Nations of the Pacific Northwest carve into totem poles and ocean-going canoes?
Cedar
Cedar also gave the peoples of the region houses, masks, boxes and tools, which is why many First Nations call it the Tree of Life.
Q 29Every natural grove of giant sequoia grows on the western slopes of which California mountain range?
Sierra Nevada
Sierra Nevada groves are the tree's only native home. Planted sequoias have nonetheless begun seeding themselves in southern California's San Jacinto Mountains, where conditions are similar.
Q 30Tāne Mahuta, a giant tree named after the Māori god of forests, belongs to which New Zealand species?
Kauri
Kauri giant Tāne Mahuta stands in Waipoua Forest in Northland and is the largest kauri known to be standing today. Its name is often rendered in English as God of the Forest.