60 Fun Facts About Arbor Day

In which US state was the first American Arbor Day held?

Nebraska. Settlers on its nearly treeless plains needed trees for windbreaks, fuel, lumber and shade, so the state set aside a day for planting them.

Roughly how many trees were planted in one day on the first American Arbor Day?

One million, by the usual estimate. Prizes went to the counties and individuals who properly planted the most trees that day, which helped drive the total.

Which comic strip's kids mark Arbor Day in a 1976 TV special by planting a garden on their baseball field?

Peanuts. In It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, the new trees catch so many fly balls that Charlie Brown's team finally takes the lead, only for rain to wash the game out.

On which day is National Arbor Day observed in the United States?

Last Friday in April is also the most common state date, but each state is free to choose, and many pick a day that suits their own planting weather.

Which president proclaimed National Arbor Day on its 100th anniversary?

Richard Nixon. Congress asked him to proclaim the centennial Arbor Day, yet the day has never been made a federal holiday.

Before proposing Arbor Day, J. Sterling Morton championed tree planting to fellow settlers in which job?

Newspaper editor. Expelled from the University of Michigan shortly before graduating in 1854, he went west that fall and was soon editing a frontier paper.

Arbor Day founder J. Sterling Morton joined Grover Cleveland's cabinet in 1893 as Secretary of what?

Agriculture. Cleveland named him in 1893 after Morton had run for governor four times and lost every race.

In 1885 Arbor Day's home state fixed it on April 22, J. Sterling Morton's birthday, now better known as what?

Earth Day. Its organizers chose April 22 for a different reason: it fell between spring break and final exams, when college students were free to join in.

Arbor Day takes its name from the word for "tree" in which language?

Latin. Arbor is its word for tree, but a garden arbor is probably unrelated: that word began as Middle English "herber", a herb garden, and only later drifted toward the tree spelling.

Joy Morton, son of Arbor Day's founder, built a household-name company selling what?

Salt. Joy Morton took over a Chicago salt agency and gave it the family name, then in 1922 turned his Illinois estate into the Morton Arboretum.

What is the Morton family estate, now a state historical park, called?

Arbor Lodge began in 1855 as a four-room frame house and grew to 52 rooms before the Morton family gave it to the state in 1923.

"Moon Trees", grown from seeds flown around the Moon on Apollo 14, were mostly planted to mark which occasion?

The US bicentennial. Astronaut Stuart Roosa, once a Forest Service smokejumper, carried the seeds; their bags burst open back on Earth, yet nearly all of them sprouted.

What is the name of the Arbor Day Foundation program that recognizes communities for good urban forestry?

Tree City USA began in 1976, and by 2025 about half of all Americans lived in a town that met its tree-care standards, one of which is holding an Arbor Day celebration.

Washington's famous cherry trees were planted in 1912 as a gift from which city?

Tokyo. Its first gift of 2,000 trees arrived so riddled with insects that President Taft ordered them burned, and a healthy replacement shipment followed two years later.

Which two YouTubers launched the #TeamTrees fundraiser with the Arbor Day Foundation in 2019?

MrBeast and Mark Rober took up a fan's dare: MrBeast had just passed 20 million subscribers, so he should plant 20 million trees, one for every dollar raised.

England's Sycamore Gap tree, illegally felled in 2023, stood in a dip beside which ancient landmark?

Hadrian's Wall. The National Trust raised 49 new trees from the felled sycamore, one for each foot of its height, and gave them to communities around the UK to plant.

Which president wrote an Arbor Day message "To the School Children of the United States"?

Theodore Roosevelt. The president who wrote to schoolchildren about the importance of trees also created the US Forest Service and set aside 150 national forests.

Hawaii holds Arbor Day early in its rainy season, in which month?

November. The start of the rains is the best time to plant a tree there, so Hawaii skips the mainland's spring date.

Florida sets its Arbor Day months ahead of the national one, on the third Friday of which month?

January. Florida follows the Southern habit of holding Arbor Day in winter, when planting weather there is best.

Which state observes Arbor Day on the third Monday in May, one of the latest dates in the country?

Alaska. States time Arbor Day to their own planting weather, so the far North goes last, and Maine waits for May as well, using its third full week.

The Tree of Ténéré, the only tree for 250 miles until a truck knocked it down in 1973, stood in which desert?

Sahara. The lone acacia in Niger was a landmark for caravans, its roots reaching water more than 100 feet down; its remains now sit in the national museum in Niamey.

China's Arbor Day, March 12, commemorates the death of which leader who championed reforestation?

Sun Yat-sen died on March 12, 1925, and within a few years the date became Arbor Day; a later resolution asks able-bodied citizens from age 11 to plant three to five trees a year.

Which president's wife led a campaign that planted thousands of dogwoods and daffodils across Washington and fought roadside billboards?

Lady Bird Johnson. The 1965 Highway Beautification Act was nicknamed Lady Bird's Bill, and her husband pressed it on his staff by saying he loved that woman and she wanted that act.

Which Jewish holiday, known as the New Year of the Trees, is marked in Israel by planting trees?

Tu BiShvat began as a farmers' date: the rabbis fixed it as the shared birthday of every fruit tree, so the years could be counted for laws on when fruit could be eaten or tithed.

Van Mahotsav, a week-long tree-planting "forest festival" held each July, is celebrated in which country?

India. It grew out of the tree-planting weeks that botanist M. S. Randhawa began in 1947, which minister K. M. Munshi turned into a national festival in 1950.

The chestnut tree Anne Frank described in her diary, toppled by a storm in 2010, stood in which city?

Amsterdam. Fungus had condemned the old chestnut by 2007, but a steel frame bought it three more years, and trees raised from it now grow at schools and memorials abroad.

Which country's village of Villanueva de la Sierra claims the first modern Arbor Day, organized by its priest in 1805?

Spain. The village priest launched the planting festival in 1805, and Villanueva has gone on marching out with music and hoes to plant trees every Carnival Tuesday.

Sikmogil, an April 5 tree-planting day that was once a public holiday, is which country's Arbor Day?

South Korea. Sikmogil dates from the 1940s, when cutting for timber and firewood had left most of the country's mountains bare.

Which Kenyan founded the tree-planting Green Belt Movement and won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize?

Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the prize. Her movement paid rural women a small sum for the seedlings they raised, so planting trees also brought in an income.

Which country's 2012 Arbor Day Act requires every able-bodied citizen aged 12 or over to plant a tree each year?

The Philippines. The act revived Arbor Day as a yearly event run by local governments, which each set a date to suit their own planting season.

What was Johnny Appleseed's real name?

John Chapman was no seed-scattering wanderer but a businessman: he planted fenced nurseries, sold the young trees to arriving settlers and died owning 1,200 acres.

In which New England colony was Johnny Appleseed born in 1774?

Massachusetts. Born in Leominster, he only later headed west, gathering apple seeds from Pennsylvania cider presses before planting his way across Ohio and beyond.

Which American poet wrote the 1913 poem "Trees", a staple of Arbor Day school programs?

Joyce Kilmer, despite the first name, was a man: Alfred Joyce Kilmer, killed by a German sniper in France in 1918, five years after the poem appeared.

Which Our Gang character gives a famously whiny rendition of "Trees" in the 1936 short "Arbor Day"?

Alfalfa squeaks through the song at the school's Arbor Day pageant, right after Spanky, playing a woodsman, is talked out of chopping down a tree.

In Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, what does the Once-ler chop down to knit his Thneeds?

Truffula. When the first one falls, the Lorax pops out of its stump to protest, explaining that he speaks for the trees because the trees have no tongues.

What single word is left carved on a pile of rocks when the Lorax departs?

UNLESS. The Once-ler finally works out what it means: unless someone like the boy cares a whole awful lot, nothing will get better, so he tosses down the very last seed.

Who voiced the title character in the 2012 animated film The Lorax?

Danny DeVito also voiced the Lorax in the film's Russian, German, Italian and Spanish dubs, learning the lines by sound because he speaks none of those languages.

Methuselah, one of the oldest known living trees at over 4,600 years, is what kind of tree?

Bristlecone pine. To protect it from vandals, the Forest Service does not reveal which tree in California's White Mountains is Methuselah.

What happened in 1964 to Prometheus, then possibly the oldest living tree?

It was cut down for research with Forest Service permission, and only when its rings were counted afterward, 4,862 of them, did anyone learn how old it had been.

Hyperion, the world's tallest known living tree, is what species?

Coast redwood. Found only in 2006, deep off any trail, it drew so many bushwhacking visitors that they trampled the ferns at its base bare, and the Park Service closed the area.

General Sherman, the largest single-stem tree on Earth by volume, grows in which California park?

Sequoia. In the 1880s a utopian socialist logging colony there called the giant the Karl Marx Tree; once the national park was created in 1890, the General Sherman name won out.

Pando, a single Utah organism of more than 40,000 identical stems, is a clone of which tree?

Quaking aspen. Pando weighs about 13 million pounds, but it is in decline: deer eat its new shoots before they can grow, so foresters have fenced parts of it off.

Old Tjikko, a roughly 9,500-year-old clonal tree in Sweden, is what species?

Norway spruce. Only its roots are ancient: each trunk lives about 600 years, and when one dies the old root system sends up a clone to replace it.

Tree-ring records are used to correct which dating method?

Radiocarbon dating. The carbon-14 in the air has varied over time, so labs measure it in wood of exactly known age, ring by ring, and use that record to turn raw readings into calendar years.

Which Renaissance figure wrote that a branch's rings show its age and its wet and dry years?

Leonardo da Vinci. He added that the rings grow thicker on a tree's north side, so its center sits nearer the southern bark.

What is the scientific name for the study of tree rings?

Dendrochronology was founded by an astronomer: A. E. Douglass began collecting tree rings hoping they would record sunspot cycles, and coined the name from the Greek for tree and time.

Which compounds, also in tea, are soaked out of bitter acorns?

Tannins. Left in, they taste bitter and hinder digestion, so people soak chopped or ground acorns in several changes of water.

Besides squirrels, which bird is the great planter of oak woods, burying acorns in autumn and never finding them all again?

Jay. The acorns it buries and never retrieves are credited with the rapid spread of oaks after the last Ice Age.

Which of these is a true oak, in the genus Quercus?

Cork oak. Its spongy bark is stripped to make wine corks, while poison oak, she-oak and silky oak only borrow the name; true oaks number about 450 to 500 species.

What gas do trees release as a byproduct of photosynthesis?

Oxygen. It comes from the water the tree takes up, not from the carbon dioxide: light energy splits the water molecules and the oxygen is what is left over.

What is the green pigment in leaves that captures light for photosynthesis?

Chlorophyll. Its green masks the yellow and orange pigments that sit in the leaf all summer, and they show only once it breaks down in autumn.

What is a young tree called?

Sapling is sap plus the little-one ending -ling, and by the 1580s English had borrowed the word for a green young person too, a sense dictionaries still list.

According to a 2015 estimate, roughly how many trees are there on Earth?

Three trillion, about seven and a half times the earlier best guess: roughly 422 trees for every person, though the study reckons the total has fallen by nearly half since farming began.

What is the official state tree of the state where Arbor Day began?

Kansas has the same state tree; the fast-growing cottonwood was one of the few natives that thrived on the open prairie.

Which tree is the state tree of New York, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin?

Sugar maple. Its sap runs when a freeze is followed by a thaw, and it takes 30 to 50 gallons of it, boiled down, to make one gallon of maple syrup.

Which state's official tree is the pecan?

Texas made the pecan its state tree in 1919 and kept going: lawmakers later named the pecan the official state health nut and pecan pie the state pie.

Which author's statue replaced J. Sterling Morton's in the US Capitol in 2023?

Willa Cather completed a double swap: the same state had replaced its other statue, of William Jennings Bryan, with the Ponca chief Standing Bear in 2019.

Japan's Greenery Day, its answer to Arbor Day, began as the birthday of which emperor?

Hirohito loved plants, so after he died in 1989 the holiday on his birthday was renamed Greenery Day; it moved to May 4 in 2007.

Which country marks Arbor Day on 5 June, the same date as World Environment Day?

New Zealand's 5 June Arbor Day falls at the start of the southern winter, the reverse of the springtime holiday celebrated in the United States.

Which African country said it planted more than 350 million trees in a single day in 2019?

Ethiopia shut some public offices so civil servants could join in, part of a drive to plant four billion trees that rainy season; the one-day total was the government's own count.