Trees and Forests
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107 free Trees and Forests trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
59 free Trees and Forests trivia questions with answers. Challenge yourself with our comprehensive Trees and Forests trivia quiz featuring 50 engaging questions. Discover fascinating facts about tree species, forest ecosystems, wildlife habitats, and environmental conservation. Whether you're a nature enthusiast or looking to expand your botanical knowledge, this quiz will test your understanding of the world's most vital natural resources.
30 of 107 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which tissue carries the sugars made in a tree's leaves to the rest of the plant?
Phloem
In trees the phloem is the innermost layer of the bark, which is why stripping a ring of bark around a trunk can starve the roots and kill the tree.
Q 02Which term describes trees that shed all their leaves for part of every year?
Deciduous
Deciduous trees drop their leaves to get through winter or a dry season: bare branches lose far less water and are much less likely to snap under a coating of ice.
Q 03What is the name of the world's tallest known living tree?
Hyperion
Hyperion, found by two naturalists in 2006, stands about 380 feet (116 m); in 2022 the park closed the ground around it, on pain of a fine or jail, because visitors were trampling its base.
Q 04Which biome has long cold winters, short mild summers and is dominated by conifers like spruce and pine?
Boreal forest
Boreal forest, or taiga, suits its trees for a reason: their narrow, tapering shape and drooping limbs shed heavy snow, and needles kept through winter can go to work as soon as the light returns.
Q 05What part of a tree is responsible for absorbing water and nutrients from the soil?
Roots
A tree's roots anchor it to the ground and are crucial for absorbing the water and dissolved mineral nutrients that the tree needs to grow.
Q 06Which tree product replaced cotton and linen rags as the main raw material for paper?
Wood pulp
Wood pulp answered a rag shortage: in the 1840s Charles Fenerty in Nova Scotia and Friedrich Keller in Europe each worked out how to grind wood into paper, though mills took decades to switch over.
Q 07Which term means restocking trees where forest has been cut or destroyed, as opposed to planting where none grew before?
Reforestation
Reforestation can happen on its own as well as by deliberate planting: it is the natural or intentional restocking of forests and woodlands depleted, usually, by deforestation.
Q 08Which tree has fan-shaped leaves that turn golden yellow in autumn?
Ginkgo biloba
Ginkgo biloba is the last survivor of a plant group over 200 million years old, and a tough one: ginkgos scorched by the Hiroshima bomb in 1945 budded again and still grow.
Q 09The Amazon Rainforest is primarily located on which continent?
South America
The vast majority of the Amazon Rainforest, the world's largest tropical rainforest, is located within the borders of South American countries, primarily Brazil.
Q 10Methuselah, one of the world's oldest known individual non-clonal trees, belongs to which species?
Bristlecone pine
Bristlecone pine Methuselah has stood in California's White Mountains for more than 4,600 years; an even older one, Prometheus, was felled for research in 1964 with the Forest Service's permission.
Q 11Which gas do trees absorb from the atmosphere for photosynthesis?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide, not soil, supplies a tree's bulk: wood is about half carbon by weight, and when Jan van Helmont grew a willow for five years it gained 74 kg while its soil lost just 57 grams.
Q 12Which tree is known for white bark that peels away in thin, papery sheets?
Birch
Birch bark is waterproof as well as light, which is why peoples across northern North America stitched sheets of it into canoes, bowls and wigwam covers.
Q 13Which Norway spruce on a Swedish mountain has kept resprouting from the same roots for about 9,500 years?
Old Tjikko
Old Tjikko's visible trunk is only a few centuries old: the spruce keeps sending up new stems from roots carbon-dated to about 9,550 years, and it was named after its discoverer's late dog.
Q 21Which conifer was unknown to science until bushwalkers found a grove of it in a remote Australian canyon in 1994?
Wollemi pine
Wollemi pine survives in the wild only as a few stands at a secret site; when bushfires closed in during 2019-20, firefighters were winched in by helicopter to set up an irrigation system and saved them.
Q 22Silkworms are raised almost entirely on the leaves of which tree?
Mulberry
Mulberry trees went into English gardens after James I urged landowners in the early 1600s to raise silkworms; the home-grown silk he hoped for never took off, but a few of those trees still stand.
Q 23Which four-season biome of the mid-latitudes is dominated by broadleaf trees rather than conifers?
Temperate deciduous forest
Q 14Which country contains about 60% of the Amazon rainforest?
Brazil
Brazil holds about 60% of the Amazon and Peru about 13%; a corner of the forest even lies in France, by way of its overseas department of French Guiana.
Q 15What is the scientific study of tree rings, used to date past climates and events, called?
Dendrochronology
Dendrochronology was founded by an astronomer, A. E. Douglass, who went looking for sunspot cycles in tree rings and ended up dating the Southwest's ancient pueblo ruins from their roof beams.
Q 16Through what process do trees release water vapor into the atmosphere, contributing to the water cycle?
Transpiration
Transpiration does two jobs: water evaporating from the leaves is the pull that lifts more up the trunk, and one large tree can give off 40,000 gallons (151,000 litres) in a year.
Q 17Which term describes a forest left for centuries without major disturbance such as logging?
Old-growth forest
Old-growth forest is marked as much by death as by age: standing dead trunks and fallen logs are part of what defines it, and species such as the northern spotted owl depend on that structure.
Q 18Which tree's dark, dense heartwood is prized for fine furniture and musical instruments?
Ebony
Ebony is a dense black hardwood, most commonly yielded by trees in the genus Diospyros, prized for its ornamental value and use in fine woodworking.
Q 19Which compound makes up 40 to 50 percent of wood and about 90 percent of cotton fibre?
Cellulose
Cellulose is the fibre that stiffens a plant's walls, yet almost no animal can digest it unaided: termites and cattle rely on microbes in their guts to break it down.
Q 20What can the annual growth rings inside a tree trunk tell scientists about?
Its age and past climate
Tree rings, or annual growth rings, provide a chronological record of a tree's life, revealing its age and reflecting environmental conditions like rainfall and temperature in specific years.
Temperate deciduous forest grows on some of the most fertile soil of any biome, which is why so much of the original forest in Europe, China and eastern North America was cleared for farmland.
Q 24Plantations of which crop have replaced large areas of rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia?
Oil palm
Oil palm gives far more oil per hectare than any rival crop, which is why it spread so fast: Indonesia and Malaysia now dominate a trade that supplies over a third of the world's vegetable oil.
Q 25Many lodgepole and jack pines keep their seeds locked away for years and release them mainly after which event?
A wildfire
A wildfire melts the resin sealing the seeds in, so they fall on freshly cleared ground just as the competition has burned away, and the pines come back in dense stands.
Q 26What is the scientific study of trees and other woody plants called?
Dendrology
Dendrology takes in shrubs and woody vines as well as trees, which is just as well, since botanists have no agreed definition of exactly what counts as a tree.
Q 27Which forest layer is formed by the interlocking crowns of mature trees and catches most of the sunlight?
Canopy
Canopy leaves take so much of the light that only a few percent reaches the floor of a tropical rainforest, which is why the ground beneath is often surprisingly bare.
Q 28Which organisms link tree roots underground in networks nicknamed the 'wood wide web'?
Fungi
Fungi called mycorrhizae wrap around or grow into a tree's root tips and reach soil the roots cannot; the tree pays for the water and minerals they bring with a sizeable share of its sugars.
Q 29What term describes trees that retain their leaves or needles throughout the year?
Evergreen
Evergreen does not mean everlasting: the trees shed old leaves a few at a time rather than all at once, and a single pine needle may last anywhere from 18 months to 40 years.
Q 30Which trees grow with their roots in salt water along tropical coasts, propped up on tangled stilts?
Mangroves
Mangroves keep most of the salt out at the root, and the tangle that props them up also slows waves and storm surges, so the shore behind a mangrove belt erodes far less.