Willow Trees
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Willow Trees trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Willows are easy to recognise and surprisingly hard to pin down. The drooping giant beside the pond is only one of hundreds of species, which range from tall riverside trees to shrubs that creep across the tundra. People have leaned on them for thousands of years, for building, weaving, healing and ritual. This quiz covers the trees themselves, including how they flower and spread, where they grow and which relatives share their family, and then follows them into workshops, sports grounds, studios and places of worship. There are questions on the science hidden in the bark, the crafts that depend on flexible stems, and the willows that turn up in plays, novels, films and paintings. It is pitched for gardeners, nature lovers and quiz fans alike: most questions can be reasoned out, and a few are there to stretch tree enthusiasts. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing why this tree has mattered to so many cultures.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sports implement is traditionally made of white willow, a light wood that resists denting?
Cricket bat
The cricket bat has a blade cut from a fast-growing variety of white willow, chosen because it neither dents much nor splinters when a hard ball hits it at speed.
Q 02A compound first found in willow bark was the chemical forerunner of which painkiller launched by Bayer?
Aspirin
Aspirin takes its name not from willow but from Spiraea, the old botanical name of meadowsweet, another plant that yields the same kind of compound.
Q 03Which Disney animated film features Grandmother Willow, a talking tree who advises its young heroine?
Pocahontas
Pocahontas turns to Grandmother Willow in times of doubt; Linda Hunt voiced the tree, which grew out of a concept sketch of a sawn-off trunk.
Q 04In the Harry Potter stories, a secret tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow leads to which building in Hogsmeade?
Shrieking Shack
The Shrieking Shack hid the young werewolf Remus Lupin during his monthly transformations, and the howling that villagers heard gave the house its fearsome reputation.
Q 05Despite a scientific name pointing to Babylon, the weeping willow first came from the north of which Asian country?
China
China is the weeping willow's homeland; traders carried it west along the Silk Road, and it reached England from Aleppo in Syria in 1730.
Q 06Which Ojibwe protective charm is traditionally a willow hoop strung with a woven web and hung over a cradle?
Dreamcatcher
The dreamcatcher began as a spider-web charm for infants: mothers and grandmothers bent willow into a hoop and wove sinew or plant cord across it.
Q 07A weeping willow shaded the first grave of which exiled ruler on the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena?
Napoleon
Napoleon lay beneath the willow from 1821 until France brought his remains home in 1840, when sailors shared out the wood of a dead tree from the grave.
Q 08Which Shakespeare character drowns when a willow branch breaks and drops her into a brook?
Ophelia
Ophelia's death happens offstage: Queen Gertrude reports that she had climbed a willow beside the water when the bough gave way.
Q 09Willow roots spread so aggressively that a tree planted near a house is notorious for invading what?
Sewer pipes
Sewer pipes of old clay or concrete leak at the joints, which draws willow roots in until they clog the line; modern PVC pipes are far less prone to it.
Q 10Which French Impressionist painted a series of weeping willows beside his water-garden pond at Giverny?
Claude Monet
Claude Monet painted the willows around his pond in the last years of the First World War, drawing on the tree's old role as a symbol of mourning to voice his own grief.
Q 11What name is given to the fuzzy, petal-less flower clusters that willows produce in early spring?
Catkins
Catkins take their name from an old Dutch word for kitten, either for their soft fur or because the longer kinds hang like a kitten's tail.
Q 12Which British author wrote The Wind in the Willows, the riverbank tale of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad?
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame first told the adventures as bedtime stories for his young son Alastair, then carried them on in letters while a long holiday kept them apart.
Q 13What name is given to the material made by weaving thin willow rods into baskets and furniture?
Wicker
Wicker suits willow because the pliable rods rarely split as they are woven and can be bent around the sharp corners of a basket.
Q 21The Willow pattern, a blue-and-white scene of a bridge, two birds and a leaning tree, is a classic design on what?
Ceramic tableware
Ceramic tableware bearing the Willow pattern has come out of English potteries since the late 1700s, and romantic legends were invented about the scene to boost sales.
Q 22In The Lord of the Rings, who frees Merry and Pippin after Old Man Willow traps the hobbits inside his trunk?
Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil arrives and sings to the ancient tree until it lets the hobbits go; Tolkien had introduced both characters in a 1934 poem, years before the novel.
Q 23In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry and Ron crash what into the Whomping Willow?
A Ford Anglia
Q 14Artists sketch with thin sticks made from willow, sold as which soft black drawing material?
Charcoal
Charcoal made from willow sticks is a studio staple, and the kind burnt from white willow was once important for making gunpowder too.
Q 15Willow is one of the Four Species, with citron and myrtle, waved in a ceremony during which Jewish festival?
Sukkot
Sukkot worshippers wave the bundle in all four directions and up and down, in part as a prayer for enough rain in the year ahead.
Q 16The willow ptarmigan, a grouse that winters on willow buds, is the official bird of which US state?
Alaska
Alaska's state bird moults from summer brown to winter white, and the adults then live largely on the buds of willows and other dwarf shrubs.
Q 17The Arctic willow grows farther north than any other woody plant, reaching the north coast of which island?
Greenland
Greenland's north coast is the limit of land for the Arctic willow, a creeping shrub so slow-growing that one plant on the island was found to be 236 years old.
Q 18Which fast-growing trees, a group that includes aspens and cottonwoods, share a plant family with the willows?
Poplars
Poplars and willows together make up the traditional willow family, and the bark and leaves of both contain the same bitter compound.
Q 19Which Latin word, used by the ancient Romans for willow trees, is now the scientific name of the willow genus?
Salix
Salix was the Romans' own word for willow; its Old English cousin survives in sallow, the name still given to broad-leaved willows.
Q 20What traditional name is given to the strong, flexible willow stems cut for basketmaking and thatching?
Withies
Withies gave their name to places such as Wythenshawe in Manchester, and the stems were also used to mark minor tidal channels in British harbours.
A Ford Anglia enchanted to fly carries the pair to school after they miss the train, and filming the crash scene destroyed 14 of the cars.
Q 24In which Shakespeare tragedy does the doomed heroine sing the Willow Song on the night her husband kills her?
Othello
Othello gives the Willow Song to Desdemona in Act 4; it was not Shakespeare's own creation but a ballad his audience already knew well.
Q 25On which Christian feast do many Eastern European churchgoers carry pussy willow branches to be blessed?
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday calls for palm fronds, which do not grow so far north, so the furry-budded willow shoots of early spring stand in for them.
Q 26One of the oldest known willow artefacts, dug from a Karelian swamp and over 10,000 years old, is what?
Fishing net
The fishing net, found by a farmer digging a ditch in 1913, was knotted from willow and stretched nearly 30 metres, with a mesh sized for salmon and bream.
Q 27In Japanese tradition, which supernatural beings are popularly said to appear wherever a willow grows?
Ghosts
Ghosts and willows go together in Japanese folklore; one famous tale, Green Willow, has a samurai fall for a woman whose spirit is bound to a willow.
Q 28Which orange-and-black butterfly, a famous lookalike of the monarch, raises its caterpillars on willow leaves?
Viceroy
The viceroy was long thought a harmless impostor, but birds find it just as unpalatable as the monarch, so each species protects the other.
Q 29Some makers use willow for the backs, sides and linings of which stringed instrument?
Double bass
Double bass repairers reach for willow too, cutting it into the splines and blocks that hold an ageing instrument together.
Q 30The dwarf willow of Arctic and alpine tundra creeps along the ground and rarely grows taller than what?
6 centimetres
6 centimetres is about its limit, as the branches creep just under the ground; some patches in Italy's Apennines are at least 2,000 years old.