Q 01/05

Which household painkiller is named after Spiraea, the old botanical name of the meadow wildflower meadowsweet?

A) Ibuprofen

B) Aspirin

C) Codeine

D) Morphine

Answer · why

B) Aspirin

Aspirin borrows the middle of its name from Spiraea, because salicylic acid, the drug's chemical starting point, was extracted from meadowsweet in the...

Q 02/05

Hooked seed heads from which common wildflower stuck to engineer George de Mestral's dog and inspired Velcro?

A) Burdock

B) Cleavers

C) Agrimony

D) Teasel

Answer · why

A) Burdock

Burdock burrs end in tiny hooks that grab fur and fabric, and the Swiss engineer copied them with one strip of hooks and one of soft loops.

Q 03/05

Queen Anne's lace, a lacy white wildflower of roadsides and fields, is the wild form of which garden vegetable?

A) Parsnip

B) Celery

C) Carrot

D) Fennel

Answer · why

C) Carrot

Carrot crops belong to the very same species, Daucus carota, and the pale wild root is edible while young but soon turns too woody to eat.

Q 04/05

Which president's wife championed the Highway Beautification Act and co-founded a wildflower center near Austin?

A) Jacqueline Kennedy

B) Rosalynn Carter

C) Eleanor Roosevelt

D) Lady Bird Johnson

Answer · why

D) Lady Bird Johnson

Lady Bird Johnson lobbied so hard for the 1965 law that it was nicknamed Lady Bird's Bill, and the Texas center she founded with actress Helen Hayes n...

Q 05/05

Which poisonous white-flowered roadside plant supplied the drink used to execute the Greek philosopher Socrates?

A) Henbane

B) Mandrake

C) Hemlock

D) Oleander

Answer · why

C) Hemlock

Hemlock is toxic in every part, the seeds and roots most of all, and it still grows wild on roadsides and at the edges of fields.