208 Fun Facts About Flower

What is the big yellow "flower" of a sunflower, botanically speaking?

A cluster of tiny florets: each 'petal' is a sterile ray floret and every seed grows from its own small floret in the centre, so one sunflower head is really a whole crowd of flowers.

Mature sunflower heads lock in place facing which direction?

Mature heads stop tracking the sun and lock facing east: the sunrise warms them quickly, and a 2016 study found that the eastward heads drew more visits from pollinators.

The sunflower is the national flower of which country?

Ukraine: sunflowers spread across Ukraine and Russia after the Orthodox Church left their oil off its list of foods banned in Lent, and by 2020 the two countries grew over half of the world's crop.

Which US state has the sunflower as its official state flower?

Kansas chose the wild sunflower in 1903, eight years after a state law had called it a noxious weed to be destroyed; the senator behind the bill took the idea from Kansans wearing it as a badge at a Colorado rodeo.

Botanically, a sunflower 'seed' still in its striped shell is which part of the plant?

A dry fruit: the striped shell is the fruit wall and only the kernel inside is the true seed; botanists call this one-seeded fruit of the daisy family a cypsela.

Sunflower spiral counts like 34 and 55, or 89 and 144, are consecutive numbers from which sequence?

Those are consecutive Fibonacci numbers: each floret sits about 137.5 degrees, the golden angle, round from the last, which packs seeds tightly and yields Fibonacci spiral counts.

Van Gogh painted his Arles sunflower still lifes in 1888 to decorate a bedroom for which fellow painter?

Paul Gauguin was so taken with them that he later asked for one, which Van Gogh was reluctant to give; during his stay in the Yellow House he also painted Van Gogh at work on a sunflower canvas.

After the Chernobyl disaster, sunflowers were floated on a nearby pond for what purpose?

To soak up radioactive metals: roots trailing in the water drew out caesium-137 and strontium-90, a clean-up method called rhizofiltration, and sunflowers were planted again after the Fukushima accident.

Rafflesia arnoldii, the largest single flower on Earth at up to a metre across, grows in the rainforests of which two islands?

Sumatra and Borneo host a bloom that smells of rotting meat, which is exactly what its fly pollinators are looking for.

With no leaves, stems or roots of its own, how does Rafflesia survive?

As a parasite inside Tetrastigma vines: Rafflesia has no chlorophyll either, so it takes everything it needs from its host and shows itself only when a bud swells out of the vine to bloom.

Rafflesia arnoldii shares which grim nickname with the unrelated titan arum?

Corpse flower: both blooms reek of rotting meat to draw the carrion insects that pollinate them, yet the two plants are not related, and a single Rafflesia flower can be a metre across.

Who presented the 1995 TV series for which the name 'titan arum' was reportedly coined?

David Attenborough is said to have coined 'titan arum' while filming The Private Life of Plants, because the Latin name Amorphophallus, 'misshapen phallus', was thought too rude for television.

What does a blooming titan arum's spadix do to spread its rotting-flesh smell?

Heats up to body temperature: the warmth, about 37 °C, turns the stench to vapour and lifts it on rising air, and it helps fool carrion insects into treating the bloom as a dead animal.

Dutch tulip mania is often called history's first recorded what?

Speculative bubble: at the peak in early 1637 a single prized bulb could cost as much as a house, and then the market collapsed almost overnight.

What caused the prized flame-like streaks on tulip mania's most coveted tulips?

A virus infecting the bulbs, the tulip breaking virus, made the petals flame with colour but left each generation weaker, so the most valuable 'broken' lines were slowly dying out.

The word "tulip" comes ultimately from a word for which item of clothing?

A turban: the name reached Europe from the Turkish tülbent, and it seems to have stuck because a fully opened bloom was thought to look like the headwear.

What is the Victorian-era practice of sending coded messages through flowers called?

Floriography let Victorians say with a bouquet what could not be spoken aloud: armed with flower dictionaries, they exchanged small 'talking bouquets' for the receiver to decode.

Which poet and letter-writer brought the flower-language craze to England from Constantinople in 1718?

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu described the Ottoman 'selam' of coded flowers in her Turkish Embassy Letters; she is better remembered for bringing smallpox inoculation home from the same trip.

In the modern language of flowers, a yellow rose stands for what?

Friendship is the modern reading of a yellow rose, a turnaround from Victorian flower dictionaries, which listed it under jealousy and fading love; deep red still means romantic love.

In which Shakespeare play does Ophelia hand out rosemary, fennel and rue?

In Hamlet (Act 4, Scene 5) Ophelia hands out rosemary 'for remembrance', fennel and rue, and regrets she has no violets, which withered when her father died.

Botanically, the sharp growths on a rose stem are not true thorns but what?

Prickles: true thorns are modified stems and spines are modified leaves, but a rose's prickles are only outgrowths of the skin with no veins inside, which is why they snap off so cleanly.

Rose hips, especially from the dog rose, are among the richest plant sources of which nutrient?

Vitamin C is so plentiful in rose hips, the fruit left after the petals fall, that they were traditionally boiled into a syrup to top up levels of it, while the irritant hairs inside were turned into itching powder.

Which US president proclaimed the rose the national floral emblem in the 1980s?

Ronald Reagan's proclamation, made at the request of Congress, argued that George Washington himself bred roses and named one after his mother, and that the White House boasts a Rose Garden.

In the Wars of the Roses, the white rose was the badge of which royal house?

The white rose was the badge of the House of York; the Tudor rose, red outside and white inside, was invented afterwards to show York and Lancaster united.

In the wild, dust-like orchid seeds cannot germinate without the help of what?

Fungus: an orchid seed carries virtually no food store of its own, so a fungal partner must feed it until the seedling can grow, a dependence found in almost every orchid.

The word "orchid" comes from the Ancient Greek for which part of the body?

Orchis is Greek for testicle: the paired underground tubers of the original Orchis species suggested the comparison to early botanists.

Enslaved 12-year-old Edmond Albius of Réunion invented the hand-pollination method still used for which crop?

Albius's 1841 trick with a thin stick and a thumb let vanilla orchids be pollinated by hand far outside their Mexican range, yet he died in poverty in 1880.

The bee orchid mimics a bee's look and scent to make a visiting bee do what?

Attempt to mate with it: a male bee picks up pollen while trying, yet in the north of the orchid's range the trick is rarely needed, because the flowers almost always pollinate themselves.

The sacred lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, is the national flower of which country?

India: the sacred lotus owes its name to its standing in Hinduism and Buddhism, where the flower symbolises enlightenment and spiritual awakening and is carved and painted throughout temple art.

Roughly how old was the sacred lotus seed from a dry Chinese lakebed that sprouted in the 1990s?

About 1,300 years: carbon dating made it the oldest seed of its kind ever germinated, and biologists now study how such seeds repair centuries of damage before sprouting for clues to ageing.

Engineers copied the 'lotus effect' in paints and fabrics to give surfaces which property?

Self-cleaning: a waxy, microscopically bumpy leaf surface makes water bead up and roll off, picking up dirt as it goes.

Saffron, the world's most expensive spice, is made from the dried stigmas of which flower?

Crocus sativus gives just three crimson threads per bloom, and it takes about 150,000 flowers to produce a single kilogram.

Which country grows roughly 90 percent of the world's saffron?

Iran grows about 90 percent of the world's saffron, all of it picked by hand in a rush: the flowers open at dawn, wilt within the day, and the whole crop blooms in a week or two each autumn.

Japan's centuries-old custom of picnicking and partying under blooming cherry trees is called what?

Hanami, 'flower viewing', is said to have begun with plum blossom before cherries took over in the Heian period; the blossom is so brief that parties are planned around a national blossom forecast.

Which flower symbolises Japan's Emperor and gives the imperial seat its nickname, the "___ Throne"?

The Chrysanthemum Throne takes its name from the 16-petal chrysanthemum of the imperial crest; in France the same flower means mourning, as the one families lay on graves at All Saints'.

The king protea, with a flower head that can be 30 cm across, is the national flower of which country?

South Africa's cricketers are nicknamed the Proteas after it, and the plant is built for the wildfires of its home scrub: when the flames pass, it resprouts from buds held in a thick underground stem.

The blue poppy is the national flower of which Himalayan kingdom?

Bhutan's blue poppy was long taken for another species, Meconopsis grandis, until a 2017 study showed it had never been named; it became gakyidiana, after the Dzongkha word for happiness.

The daffodil is the national flower of which part of the United Kingdom?

The daffodil is the national flower of Wales; it shares the job with the leek, and both are worn on St David's Day, 1 March.

Bluebonnets are the state flower of which US state, where a persistent myth says picking them is illegal?

Texas has no law against picking them; the famous roadside carpets are owed largely to the state highway department, which began spreading bluebonnets along its verges in the 1930s.

Ohio's state flower, the red carnation, honours which assassinated president who always wore one?

William McKinley wore a scarlet carnation for luck after an opponent handed him one in a campaign he went on to win; shortly before he was shot in 1901, he gave the one in his lapel to a 12-year-old girl.

Hydrangea blooms act as a natural pH indicator, usually turning which colour in alkaline soil?

Pink: alkaline soil locks away aluminium, while acid soil frees it for the roots to take up, and that alone is enough to change the colour of the very same bush.

Poppies became a remembrance symbol after growing over soldiers' graves in which Belgian region in WWI?

Flanders' poppy fields gave John McCrae his 1915 poem, and an American teacher, Moina Michael, first proposed wearing the flower in 1918.

Every float in Pasadena's Rose Parade must be entirely covered with what?

Flowers or natural materials such as seeds, bark and leaves must cover every inch; the parade also never runs on a Sunday, a rule set in 1893 to avoid startling horses hitched outside churches.

What does the name of the alpine flower edelweiss literally mean in German?

Noble white: edel is 'noble' and weiss is 'white', for the star of woolly leaves round the tiny yellow flower heads, a felt of hairs thought to shield the plant from the strong ultraviolet light of high mountains.

The dandelion's name comes from the French for what?

Lion's tooth, dent-de-lion, describes the jagged leaves; the French themselves now call the plant pissenlit, 'wet-the-bed', after the diuretic effect of those same leaves.

Magnolia flowers are thought to have evolved before bees, to be pollinated by which insects instead?

Beetles: magnolias are an ancient line, with family fossils some 95 million years old, and their flowers are built tough because the visiting insects chew through them as they feed.

Malaysia's national flower, the bunga raya, is which bloom, nicknamed the 'shoeblack plant' because its petals can polish shoes?

Hibiscus: the petals of the Chinese hibiscus were crushed to make a black shoe polish and a hair dye, which is also why Indonesians and Malaysians know it as the 'shoe flower'.

Which bright orange flower, cempasúchil, decorates altars and graves for Día de Muertos?

Marigold: the Aztec name means 'twenty flower', and its bright petals and strong scent are believed to guide the souls of the dead from the cemetery back to their family altars.

Which artist's painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44 million in 2014, then a record for a woman artist?

Georgia O'Keeffe's own museum sold the canvas, and its record stood for eleven years, until a Frida Kahlo self-portrait made $54.7 million in 2025.

Which naturalist proposed a 'horologium florae', a garden that tells the time by when its flowers open?

Carl Linnaeus worked the flower clock out from opening and closing times he logged at Uppsala; gardens that tried to plant one in the 1800s had mixed success, because the timings shift with latitude and weather.

True lilies of the genus Lilium are known to be highly toxic to which household pet?

Many plants called 'lily' are not true lilies, but the real ones can cause kidney failure in cats.

Which white lily does Gabriel hold in Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation?

The Madonna lily was the painters' emblem of the Virgin Mary's purity; the Easter lily that fills modern churches is another species, native to Japan and Taiwan.

Which statistician used measurements of three Iris species in a famous 1936 paper?

Ronald Fisher's 1936 paper used Edgar Anderson's measurements of Iris setosa, versicolor and virginica; the data set became the standard teaching example of linear discriminant analysis.

An iris has three upright petals called standards and three outer sepals known as what?

Falls: the three sepals spread or droop to make a landing stage for insects, and on bearded irises a strip of fuzzy hairs on each one guides the visitor in towards the nectar.

The iris shares its name with the Greek goddess of what?

Rainbow: Iris was its goddess and the messenger of the gods, and the flower's name, from the Greek word for rainbow, is thought to refer to the wide range of colours among its species.

Which insects swarm over peony buds to drink their nectar, though the flowers open perfectly well without them?

Ants come for the sugary nectar on the outside of the buds and may see off other pests in return; the old belief that a peony cannot open without them is a myth.

Lavender is a member of which group of plants?

The sage family, Lamiaceae, is better known as the mint family: its members are so often aromatic that it supplies many kitchen herbs, from basil and rosemary to thyme, oregano and lavender itself.

Which two compounds are the main components of lavender oil?

Linalyl acetate and linalool make up most of lavender oil; because a high share of the first marks the best grades, lavender is among the most often adulterated essential oils, bulked out with synthetic versions.

Jasmine belongs to the same plant family as which tree?

The olive: jasmine sits in the olive family, Oleaceae, with lilac, privet and ash, a group botanists recognise by its flowers, which carry just two stamens.

Sampaguita, a white jasmine, is the national flower of which country?

The Philippines chose the sampaguita, also called Arabian jasmine, as a symbol of purity; its buds are strung into garlands for visitors and for religious images, and Indonesia counts the same species a national flower.

Which genus name, from the Greek for a shepherd's pipe, do botanists give to lilacs?

Syringa comes from the Greek syrinx, a shepherd's pipe, after stems that could be hollowed into pipes; the name first belonged to the mock orange, which some gardeners still call syringa.

The name 'daisy' is considered a corruption of which phrase?

Day's eye, from the Old English dæges eage: the flower head closes at night and opens again in the morning, which is why Chaucer called it the 'eye of the day'.

The common daisy's Latin name Bellis perennis roughly translates as what?

Pretty everlasting: perennis means lasting through the years, and Bellis is usually traced to bellus, 'pretty'; herbalists valued the astringent plant too, hence its old names bruisewort and woundwort.

In horticulture, the large-flowered, multicoloured Viola cultivars raised from seed for bedding are usually called what?

Pansies take their name from the French pensée, 'thought', because the flower was treated as a token of remembrance; the showy garden forms were bred from wild violas in early 19th-century England.

Which Greek botanist is credited with giving carnations the name 'dianthus', meaning divine flower?

Theophrastus took over the Lyceum from Aristotle and wrote the plant studies that made him the 'father of botany'; the name joins the Greek for 'of Zeus', or divine, and 'flower'.

The carnation's spicy scent earned it what common name?

Clove pink: the petals' spicy, clove-like scent was once put to work in the kitchen, flavouring wine, beer, vinegar and sauces.

Gardenias belong to the same family as which beverage plant?

Coffee: gardenias sit in Rubiaceae, the coffee family, and the common species has a practical side too, as its fruit yields a yellow dye used in China to colour cloth and sweets.

The genus Gardenia honors a naturalist of which nationality?

Scottish-born Alexander Garden practised medicine in Charleston, South Carolina, and shipped local specimens to Linnaeus and John Ellis, who honoured him with a genus that grows wild in Africa and Asia, nowhere near Charleston.

Which species of the tea genus is actually processed into tea?

C. sinensis, short for Camellia sinensis, gives white, green, oolong and black tea alike: the plant is the same, and it is mainly how far the leaves are left to oxidise in processing that makes the difference.

Truly yellow camellia flowers are found in the wild only in South China and which other country?

Vietnam: the golden camellia grows wild only there and in neighbouring Guangxi, where it is rare enough that China set aside a nature reserve to protect it in the 1980s.

Foxgloves' Latin genus name refers to which part of the body?

Finger: the Latin name, coined in 1542, apparently translates the plant's German name Fingerhut, 'thimble', for tubular blooms that slip over a fingertip.

Which cardiac drug is extracted from foxglove plants?

Digoxin, a cardiac glycoside purified from the woolly foxglove Digitalis lanata, slows and strengthens the heartbeat; the plant is very toxic if eaten.

Chinese and Japanese wisteria can be told apart because their stems do what?

Twine in opposite directions: seen from above, Japanese wisteria winds clockwise round its support and Chinese wisteria the other way, a quick test that works even when neither vine is in flower.

Guinness named a Sierra Madre wisteria spanning an acre the world's largest blossoming plant, in which US state?

California: planted from a one-gallon pot in 1894, the Sierra Madre vine grew until it crushed the house beside it; it is now said to weigh 250 tons and is open to the public one day a year.

Wisteria is a member of which group of plants?

The legume family: wisteria flowers are shaped like pea blossom and ripen into velvety, bean-like pods, but unlike garden peas the seeds inside are poisonous.

The bird of paradise flower, Strelitzia, is the floral emblem of which US city?

Los Angeles made the bird of paradise its official flower; the common name comes from the bloom's likeness to the bird's plumage, while the genus, Strelitzia, honours Britain's Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Strelitzia flowers are built to dust their pollen onto which part of a visiting bird?

Its feet: when a sunbird lands on the flower to drink, the bloom opens under the bird's weight and dusts pollen onto its feet, to be carried off to the next plant.

Dahlia tubers store their energy as which carbohydrate instead of starch?

Inulin, a chain of fructose units, fills dahlia tubers in place of starch; our own enzymes cannot break it down, so it counts as dietary fibre, and doctors use it to measure how well the kidneys filter.

Which colour of dahlia have breeders chased since the 1840s without ever producing a true example?

Blue: dahlias cannot build the pigment a true blue needs, so the 2,000-pound prize an Edinburgh society offered in 1846 has never been claimed; mauve and lilac are as close as breeders have come.

The name Gladiolus is Latin for a small version of what object?

The plants are sometimes called sword lilies for their blade-shaped leaves.

Gladioli grow from which type of underground storage organ?

Corms are swollen stem bases, not layered bulbs: each season the plant uses up the old one, which shrivels away as a fresh corm forms just above it, ready to be lifted and stored for winter.

The genus Zinnia honors an 18th-century scientist of which nationality?

Linnaeus named the genus for the German botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn; in 2016 astronaut Scott Kelly coaxed mould-hit zinnias into bloom aboard the International Space Station.

Geraniums are 'cranesbills'; the name of their cousin Pelargonium comes from the Greek for which other long-billed bird?

Stork is pelargos in Greek: botanists chose the name because the plant's long seed head looks like a stork's bill, echoing Geranium, which comes from geranos, 'crane'.

Unlike a true Geranium, a Pelargonium flower is zygomorphic, meaning what?

It has a single symmetry plane, like a face: the two upper petals differ from the three lower ones, the quickest way to tell a pelargonium from a true geranium, whose five petals match all round.

The petunia's name comes from a Tupi-Guarani word for which plant?

Petun was the Tupi-Guarani word for tobacco, a close relative: petunias belong to the nightshade family alongside tobacco, tomatoes and potatoes.

Petunia exserta, a rare wild petunia with scentless red flowers, is pollinated by which animals?

Hummingbirds find flowers mainly by sight, not scent, so this Brazilian petunia is red and scentless; its white cousin is fragrant and draws hawkmoths instead.

The rhododendron is the national flower of which country?

Nepal's national flower is the red rhododendron, lali gurans, which wreathes the national emblem; bees that feed heavily on rhododendron nectar make 'mad honey', poisonous in quantity.

The word rhododendron combines the Greek words for 'rose' and what?

Rhododendron joins the Greek rhodon, 'rose', and dendron, 'tree', yet in Latin the word first meant the oleander, until Linnaeus reassigned it in 1753.

The showy colored parts of a bougainvillea are actually what?

The true flowers are small and white, hidden inside the bracts, which are so thin and papery that the plant is nicknamed paper flower.

Bougainvillea is named after a French explorer of which profession?

Louis Antoine de Bougainville, later a Navy admiral, led the first French voyage around the world in 1766-69; its botanist, Philibert Commerçon, was the first European to describe the vine.

Which flower is named after the first United States minister to Mexico?

Poinsettia honours Joel Roberts Poinsett, the diplomat who began sending the plants from Mexico to his South Carolina greenhouses in the 1820s.

The poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, belongs to which plant family?

The poinsettia is a member of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, which is why a cut stem bleeds milky white latex like other euphorbias.

The Ecke family made poinsettias a Christmas staple by sending free plants to which businesses?

Television stations got free poinsettias from Paul Ecke Jr. to dress their sets from Thanksgiving to Christmas, so viewers saw the plants on air all season.

The giant Amazon water lily's genus was named in 1837 after which newly enthroned monarch?

Queen Victoria gave the genus Victoria its name within months of her accession; in 1849 Joseph Paxton coaxed the first British bloom at Chatsworth, and a flower was presented to her.

The ribbed underside of the giant Amazon water lily's leaf inspired the design of which 19th-century building?

The Crystal Palace grew out of the lily house Joseph Paxton built at Chatsworth: he copied the leaf's web of ribs after testing its strength by floating his daughter Annie on a pad.

Plumeria is better known by which common name?

Plumeria is the frangipani: its milky sap irritates skin and eyes, but the night-scented flowers are prized for leis in Hawaii.

Galanthus, the snowdrop genus, joins the Greek for 'flower' with a root shared by 'galaxy', meaning what?

Milk: Galanthus is the Greek gala, 'milk', plus anthos, 'flower', for the white blooms, and 'galaxy' grew from the same word by way of the Milky Way.

The word 'daffodil' appears to derive from the name of which other flower?

'Daffodil' is a variant of 'affodill', the asphodel, which Greek myth made the flower of Hades and the dead; where the extra d came from has never been settled.

What is the cup- or trumpet-shaped central part of a daffodil flower called?

The corona's length is how growers sort daffodils: a trumpet is at least as long as the petals around it, while a cup is shorter.

Long before they reached Dutch fields, wild tulips evolved in the mountains of which region?

Central Asia's Tien Shan and Pamir ranges hold the greatest variety of wild tulips; the flower moved west through Persian and Turkish gardens long before the Dutch grew it.

In the 1590s Carolus Clusius planted the tulips that launched the Dutch bulb trade in which university city's garden?

Leiden's university hired Clusius in 1593 to run its new garden; his tulips so tempted collectors that thieves raided the beds twice, carrying off more than a hundred bulbs.

Tulips belong to which plant family?

Liliaceae, the lily family, also holds true lilies and fritillaries; in the Dutch 'Hunger Winter' of 1944-45, soup kitchens stretched their meals with tulip bulbs.

Monet's Water Lilies series depicts the pond he built in his garden in which French village?

Giverny is where Monet bought a marshy plot across the railway line in 1893 and diverted a brook to fill his pond, which he then painted for the rest of his life.

Which Paris museum built two oval rooms to house eight large Monet water lily murals?

The Musée de l'Orangerie holds the panels Monet offered to France the day after the 1918 Armistice as a symbol of peace; its two oval rooms opened in 1927, months after he died.

Monet painted many of his Water Lilies while suffering from which eye condition?

Cataracts clouded Monet's sight for years before he agreed to surgery in 1923; afterwards his palette shifted, and he painted his pond with far more blue than before.

Wordsworth's poem 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' was inspired by daffodils beside which lake?

Ullswater's shore at Glencoyne Bay is where Wordsworth met the daffodils in April 1802; he wrote the poem two years later, and his wife Mary supplied what he called its two best lines.

Who walked beside Wordsworth when he met his famous daffodils?

His sister Dorothy was beside him on the lake shore in April 1802 and described the daffodils in her journal; the poet who 'wandered lonely' left her out of the poem.

The Chelsea Flower Show is held each May in the grounds of which London landmark?

The Royal Hospital's grounds were borrowed for a one-off international exhibition in 1912 and proved such a good site that the Great Spring Show moved in for good the next year.

The Chelsea Flower Show was cancelled during the Second World War because its grounds were needed for what?

An anti-aircraft site took over the grounds when the War Office requisitioned them; the show came back in 1947, with fewer stands and some doubt it would return at all.

What does the name Keukenhof literally mean in Dutch?

Kitchen garden: in the 15th century the estate was the hunting ground of Countess Jacoba of Bavaria's Teylingen Castle and supplied its kitchen with game, fruit and vegetables.

Roughly how many flower bulbs are planted at Keukenhof each year?

7 million bulbs go in by hand each autumn, donated by about 100 growers who treat the park as a living catalogue; it then opens for only about eight weeks.

In which Dutch municipality is Keukenhof located?

Lisse sits at the centre of Holland's Bulb Region, where sandy soil behind the coastal dunes suits bulbs so well that growers cleared every old estate in town except Keukenhof.

The world's biggest flower auction, Royal FloraHolland, is headquartered in which Dutch town?

Aalsmeer's auction is a Dutch auction: the price on the clock starts high and falls until the first buyer accepts, a system built for goods that must sell fast.

How many flowers did Royal FloraHolland destroy in March 2020 as COVID collapsed demand?

400 million flowers had to be destroyed in March 2020 alone, because lockdowns emptied the market and Royal FloraHolland's sales fell by more than 70 percent.

The name fleur-de-lis is French for the flower of which plant?

The lily is what the French words name, yet the heraldic shape is widely thought to be drawn from a yellow iris, which its three upright petals more closely resemble.

The fleur-de-lis appears on the flag of which Canadian province?

Quebec adopted the Fleurdelisé on 21 January 1948 and flew it over the Parliament Building that same afternoon, in place of the Union Jack.

What is the collective term for all the petals of a flower?

The corolla is the ring of petals, a flower's billboard for pollinators, which is why wind-pollinated plants such as grasses have tiny petals or none at all.

What is the collective name for a flower's sepals?

The calyx is the ring of sepals; in most flowers it withers after blooming, but an aubergine's keeps growing with the fruit and stays on as its cap.

A stamen typically consists of an anther and which stalk?

The filament is usually a plain stalk, but in mountain laurel it is bent like a spring: when a bee lands, it snaps free and flings the pollen onto the insect.

Which cactus has been found to carry as many as 3,482 stamens in a single flower?

The saguaro crowds thousands of stamens into each white flower, which opens after sunset for nectar-feeding bats and closes for good the following afternoon.

In pollination, pollen lands on which part of a flower before growing a tube down the style?

The stigma is usually sticky to trap pollen, and it is choosy: in many plants it can recognise and reject the plant's own pollen, forcing a cross with a neighbour.

Which term describes one sperm nucleus forming the embryo while another forms the endosperm?

Double fertilisation gives each seed a packed lunch, the endosperm; that tissue is the white flesh of a coconut and the flour in a grain of wheat.

The word 'angiosperm' comes from Greek words meaning what?

Vessel and seed: Greek angeion, 'vessel', plus sperma, 'seed', a name for seeds enclosed within a fruit, unlike the naked seeds of gymnosperms.

Roughly how many known species of flowering plants are there?

About 300,000 species are known, and people lean on them hard: farming depends almost entirely on flowering plants, from rice, maize and wheat to nearly every fruit and vegetable.

In which geological period did flowering plants diversify explosively and come to dominate Earth's vegetation?

Flowering plants burst onto the scene in the Cretaceous, from about 130 million years ago, though their ancestors had split from the gymnosperm line more than 300 million years ago.

The forget-me-not is the official flower of which US state?

Alaska adopted the forget-me-not in 1917, decades before statehood; a German legend gives the name to a knight who fell into the Danube picking the flowers for his lady and was swept away.

What is the French name for lily of the valley, often used for perfumes imitating its scent?

Muguet, lily of the valley, is given as sprigs across France every 1 May; the plant is highly poisonous because of cardiac glycosides, despite its sweet smell.

Lily of the valley was the favourite flower of which French couturier, who built a 1956 perfume around its scent?

Christian Dior wore the flower in his lapel and launched Diorissimo to capture it; because no oil can be extracted from the blooms, the scent had to be rebuilt in the laboratory.

Anemones are commonly known by which name, echoing the Greek word anemos?

Windflowers echoes the Greek anemos, 'wind', one suggested root of anemone; Ovid says the petals are so frail that the wind soon blows them away.

The word chamomile comes from Greek words meaning what?

Chamomile comes from Greek chamaimelon, 'earth apple', for the apple-like scent; Matricaria chamomilla and Chamaemelum nobile are the two species used for herbal teas.

The garden flower cosmos shares its name with the universe, from a Greek word that first meant what?

Order is the root sense of the Greek kosmos, which also gave English 'cosmetic'; the flower is thought to be named for its neatly arranged petals, though a rival theory says 'jewel'.

Delphiniums are commonly known by which bird-related name?

Delphiniums are larkspurs, named for the spur behind each flower that resembles a lark's hind claw; crane's-bill is Geranium and cockscomb is Celosia.

In one version of the Greek myth, which jealous wind god blew Apollo's discus off course, killing Hyacinthus?

Zephyrus, the west wind, is the jealous rival in one telling; in the usual version Apollo's own throw rebounds and kills Hyacinthus, and the flower that rises from his blood is marked 'AI AI', alas.

Grape hyacinths belong to which separate genus?

Grape hyacinths are Muscari, a name thought to come from the Greek for musk, after the scent of some species; despite the look, they are not true hyacinths.

The name nasturtium is traditionally read as Latin for what?

Nose-twister, from nasus and torquere, is the traditional reading, for the peppery bite that wrinkles the nose; botanically the name belongs to watercress, Nasturtium officinale.

Despite its edible-sounding name, which part of the sweet pea is toxic if eaten in quantity?

The seeds look like garden peas but are toxic in quantity; a diet heavy in a related species causes lathyrism, a disease named after the genus, Lathyrus.

The sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus, is native to which Mediterranean island?

Sicily is where a monk described the wild purple flower in 1696; he is believed to have sent the plant on to botanists in England and Amsterdam, where its garden career began.

Morning glories belong to the same genus, Ipomoea, as which staple root vegetable?

The sweet potato is Ipomoea batatas, a morning glory with swollen roots; despite the name it is only a distant relative of the potato, and no kin to true yams.

Which old English name for the honeysuckle describes how it twines around trees?

Woodbine is the Old English wudubinde, 'wood-bind', for the way the vine twines up trees and hedges; Shakespeare's Oberon pictures a bank 'quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine'.

Which Lonicera species has become an aggressive invasive around the world since the early 1800s?

Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, was introduced to the United States in 1806 as an ornamental and now smothers native vegetation across the eastern states and on several continents.

Common heather, Calluna vulgaris, flowers during which months?

July to September is when beekeepers haul their hives up to the purple moors; heather honey sets so jelly-like that it is often sold still in the comb.

The cornflower is also commonly known by what name?

Bachelor's button is the cornflower, Centaurea cyanus, once a weed of grain fields, hence 'corn'; intensive farming has made it scarce in the wild in Britain.

Cornflower blue comes from the same anthocyanin pigment that gives roses which colour?

Red in roses, the same anthocyanin turns blue in cornflowers because it is locked into a 'superpigment', protocyanin, with flavones and iron, magnesium and calcium ions.

The orchid genus Cattleya was named after a horticulturalist of which nationality?

English merchant William Cattley coaxed an unnamed orchid from Pernambuco, Brazil, into bloom, and John Lindley, the botanist he employed, named the new genus after him.

Which orchid genus is commonly known as the moth orchid?

Phalaenopsis is Greek for 'moth-like'; it became the everyday house orchid because it is easy to propagate and its flowers can last two to three months indoors.

The hybrid orchid Vanda 'Miss Joaquim' is the national flower of which country?

Singapore chose the orchid in 1981 for its resilience and year-round blooming; it first turned up in the 1890s in the garden of Agnes Joaquim, a prize-winning local horticulturist.

Members of the genus Ranunculus are commonly known by which name?

Buttercups glow under a chin in the children's game because the petal's upper surface is mirror-smooth, bouncing yellow light onto the skin.

Which extremely poisonous flower is also known as monkshood or wolfsbane?

Aconitum earned both names: monkshood for the helmet-like hood of each flower, wolfsbane because its juice is thought to have poisoned the arrows and bait used to kill wolves.

Which poisonous Mediterranean shrub is the only species in the genus Nerium?

Oleander is highly poisonous, yet Hiroshima made it the city flower: it is remembered as the first to bloom on the scorched earth after the atomic bombing of 1945.

Hibiscus is a member of which group of plants?

The mallow family also gives us cotton, okra and cacao, and its marsh mallow gave marshmallows their name: the sweet was first made from the plant's root.

Which hibiscus relatives make up the garden genus Alcea?

Hollyhocks have nothing to do with holly: the name began in the Middle Ages as 'holy hock', with hock an old word for such plants.

In Scotland, the name 'bluebell' usually refers to which flower?

In Scotland 'bluebell' means the harebell, Campanula rotundifolia; elsewhere in Britain the bluebell is Hyacinthoides non-scripta, protected under UK law.

Columbines, genus Aquilegia, are known for petals bearing what feature?

Nectar spurs trail behind each petal; turned upside down, the flower looked to medieval eyes like a huddle of doves, hence 'columbine', from the Latin columba, 'dove'.

Marigold petal meal is added to poultry feed to deepen the colour of what?

Tagetes petal meal, rich in the xanthophyll lutein, is mixed into poultry feed to deepen the orange of egg yolks and broiler skin.

A badge shaped like a calla lily is worn each spring to remember the dead of which uprising?

The Easter Rising of 1916 is remembered by Irish republicans with the 'Easter lily' badge, first sold in 1926; despite its Latin name, aethiopica, the plant comes from southern Africa.

Which fish gives its name to a North American woodland lily with brown-mottled leaves?

Trout lilies carpet spring woods with leaves mottled like a brook trout; ants carry off and plant the seeds, and a seedling then waits four to seven years to flower.

The botanical term 'sepal', coined in 1790, is thought to come from a Greek word meaning what?

Covering is the sense of the Greek skepe, which Noël de Necker is thought to have blended with 'petal' to coin sepalum in 1790, since sepals wrap the flower in bud.

Wolffia, the smallest flowering plant on Earth, is a rootless member of which group of floating pond plants?

Duckweeds include Wolffia, a rootless green speck as small as half a millimetre that looks like floating cornmeal; in parts of Asia it is skimmed off ponds and eaten as a vegetable.

Which kitchen spice is the dried, unopened flower bud of a tree native to Indonesia's Maluku Islands?

Cloves are harvested once the buds turn bright red, and their oil is mostly eugenol, a compound used to ease toothache.

Many flower petals carry bee-guiding patterns that people cannot see, visible only in which kind of light?

Ultraviolet markings steer pollinators to the centre of the flower like runway lights, and the shade that bees see there has been nicknamed bee violet.

After fertilisation, which part of a flower swells and ripens into a fruit such as a tomato or cherry?

The ovary ripens into the fruit, which is why botanists class cucumbers, pumpkins and bean pods as fruits alongside cherries.

The word 'pistil', the female organ of a flower, comes from the Latin for which kitchen tool?

A pestle is the club used for pounding in a mortar, and early botanists thought the organ at the heart of a flower looked just like one.

Which fruit begins as a hollow, fleshy chamber lined on the inside with many tiny flowers?

A fig keeps its flowers hidden, so the tiny wasps that pollinate them have to squeeze in through a narrow pore at its tip.

Which tiny structures inside a flower develop into seeds once they have been fertilised by pollen?

Ovules become the seeds, and their protective outer layers turn into the seed coat.

The word 'petal' reached English in the 1700s from a Greek word that originally meant what?

Leaf is the root sense: Greek 'petalon' meant a leaf or a thin plate of metal, from an adjective for anything broad and outspread.

Which gland inside a flower secretes the sugary liquid that rewards visiting bees and hummingbirds?

The nectary is not confined to blooms: some plants grow extra ones outside the flower to feed animals that, in turn, protect them from plant-eaters.

Which vegetable is the flower bud of a cultivated thistle, picked before it has the chance to bloom?

Artichoke buds left unpicked open into purple thistle heads, and the 'choke' at the centre is a mass of immature flowers.

After fertilisation, which crop sends a thread-like peg from each flower into the soil, where its pods ripen?

Peanut plants bury their own fruit, a habit so unusual among legumes that the species was named 'hypogaea', from the Greek for 'under the earth'.

The strawberry is called an accessory fruit because its red flesh grows from which part of the flower?

The receptacle, the base that holds the flower's organs, swells into the red flesh, while each apparent seed on the outside is really a tiny fruit of its own.

Each strand of silk on an ear of corn is which greatly elongated part of a female flower?

A style runs from every single kernel to the tip of the ear, so each strand must catch a pollen grain of its own before its kernel can develop.

What is the feathery parachute that carries each dandelion seed away on the wind called?

A pappus stays aloft because air passing its bristles forms a stable ring-shaped vortex in its wake, giving the seed extra lift and drag.

What is the basic female unit of a flower, one or more of which join to form a pistil?

A carpel can ripen on its own: a pea pod grows from just one, splitting along two seams to release its seeds.

What is the main stalk that holds up a whole cluster of flowers, or one solitary bloom, called?

A peduncle keeps its name after fertilisation, when it carries the ripening fruit, while a flower with no stalk at all is described as sessile.

The giant bloom of the titan arum is not a single flower but which kind of structure?

An inflorescence is a whole cluster of flowers on one stem, and the titan arum's can stand more than 3 metres tall.

What is the white, petal-like hood that wraps around the flower spike of a peace lily called?

A spathe is not a petal at all: the peace lily's real flowers are the tiny ones packed along the fleshy spike that it surrounds.

In a pea or bean flower, what are the two fused lower petals that enclose the pollen-bearing parts called?

The keel is named for its boat shape, and in many pea-family flowers a visiting insect forces it downwards to release the pollen.

What is the botanical name for the enlarged, showy petal that gives insects a landing platform on an orchid?

The labellum starts out at the top of the bud, but in many orchids the opening flower twists so that it ends up underneath, ready for visitors to land on.

Carrot, parsley and dill carry their tiny flowers in which flat-topped cluster, with stalks spreading from one point?

An umbel takes its name from the Latin for a sunshade, the same root as umbrella, because its stalks spread out like the ribs of one.

What do botanists call each ring of similar parts, such as all the petals, arranged around a flower's centre?

A whorl comes in four kinds in most flowers, stacked in a fixed order from the protective outer ring inward to the seed-making centre.

Which term do botanists use for a single flower that carries both male and female working organs?

Perfect is the botanist's word for a bloom holding both sexes, the commonest arrangement of all, whereas holly keeps its male and female blooms on separate plants.

A lily flower can be divided into identical sectors around its centre, showing which type of symmetry?

Radial symmetry, the 'star-shaped' plan, is the ancestral one for flowers; the mirror-image form seen in orchids evolved later, many times over.

On a bearded iris, what are the three upright inner petals that rise above the drooping sepals called?

Standards crown a flower whose genus shares its name with the Greek goddess of the rainbow.

What is the collective name for all the stamens, the male parts, of a single flower?

The androecium takes its name from Greek words for 'man' and 'house', and it can range from a single stamen in some flowers to thousands in others.

What do botanists call the whole outer envelope of a flower, its sepals and petals taken together?

The perianth takes its name from the Greek for 'around the flower', and it is the part of a bloom that plays no direct role in reproduction.

On a maize plant, the male flowers that shed pollen sit in which feathery structure at the top of the stem?

The tassel relies on the wind to carry its pollen, though most of it comes down within a few metres of the plant.

In a flower, the tissue that the future seeds are attached to shares its name with which organ of mammal pregnancy?

The placenta of a flower feeds each future seed through a tiny stalk, much as a mammal's supplies a growing foetus.

What is the study of pollen grains and spores, used to solve crimes and reconstruct ancient climates, called?

Palynology takes its name from a Greek verb meaning 'I strew or sprinkle', and it is put to work in archaeology and honey production too.

Flowers whose parts come in multiples of three, as in tulips and irises, mark which great group of flowering plants?

Monocots also take in the orchids, the daffodils and all the grasses, which makes them the source of rice, wheat and maize.

In Greek myth, which youth who fell in love with his own reflection shares his name with the daffodil genus?

Narcissus may not be the whole story: the flower's name is also often linked to a Greek word meaning 'to make numb'.

The cherry trees around Washington, D.C.'s Tidal Basin began as a 1912 gift from the mayor of which city?

Tokyo's mayor Yukio Ozaki sent 3,020 trees, and within three years the United States had replied with a gift of flowering dogwoods.

Which golf major is played each April on a former plant nursery famed for its blooming azaleas?

The Masters is held at Augusta National, where every hole is named after a tree or shrub, among them the par-five 13th, Azalea.

Which Canadian city's May tulip festival grew from bulbs the Dutch royal family sent in thanks after World War II?

Ottawa sheltered the future Queen Juliana during the war, and her daughter Margriet was born there in a hospital ward declared extraterritorial.

Walt Whitman's poem 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' is an elegy for which president?

Abraham Lincoln is never once named in the poem, which mourns him through lilacs, a drooping star and a hermit thrush.

The name 'primrose', given to several early spring wildflowers, comes from Medieval Latin words meaning what?

First rose is the literal sense of 'prima rosa', while the plant's botanical name Primula comes from a phrase meaning 'firstling of spring'.

In France, sprigs of lily of the valley are traditionally sold as a symbol of spring on which annual holiday?

May Day, France's Labour Day on 1 May, is the one day of the year when the flowers may be sold there without paying sales tax.

What name is given to the dangling, petal-less flower clusters that hazel, birch and willow bear each spring?

Catkins take their name from an old Dutch word for 'kitten', and most rely on the wind rather than insects to spread their pollen.

Which shrub, named after a royal head gardener, covers its bare branches in yellow flowers in early spring?

Forsythia honours William Forsyth, a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society, and it blooms before its own leaves appear.

Primrose Day, 19 April, marks the death of which British prime minister, who was said to love the flower?

Benjamin Disraeli was sent bunches of primroses by the queen herself, and for decades his admirers wore them as buttonholes on the anniversary.

Lily of the valley, once the national flower of Yugoslavia, became the national flower of which Nordic country in 1967?

Finland's national flower is as dangerous as it is sweet-smelling: every part of the plant, red berries included, is potentially poisonous.

Galantamine, a drug first isolated from the bulbs of snowdrops, is used to treat which condition?

Alzheimer's disease in its early stages is treated with the compound, which daffodils and the red spider lily also produce.

A pot of hyacinths is sometimes added to the Haft-sin table laid for which spring new year festival?

Nowruz is celebrated on the spring equinox, and the table's seven main items all have names beginning with the same letter of the alphabet.

Which North American wildflower makes enough heat to melt its way up through frozen ground in early spring?

Skunk cabbage can run 15 to 35 °C warmer than the air around it, so it blooms while snow and ice still cover the ground.

Many spring-flowering plants will not bloom until they have felt a long spell of winter cold, a process called what?

Vernalization, from the Latin for 'of the spring', makes sure that flowering and seed-setting wait for spring instead of happening in autumn.

The 'Tulip Era' of 1718 to 1730, named after a court craze for the flower, was a peaceful period for which empire?

Ottoman court society grew so fond of the flower that tulips came to stand for nobility and privilege, until a revolt brought the era to an end.

The white trillium, a spring woodland wildflower, is the official floral emblem of which Canadian province?

Ontario adopted it in 1937, and despite a widespread belief, no law specifically makes picking one illegal in the province.

'May blossom' is a traditional English name for the late-spring flowers of which common hedgerow tree?

Hawthorn generally flowers in May, hence the name, and it also goes by quickthorn, whitethorn and the ominous motherdie.

Which pickled garnish is the unopened flower bud of a thorny shrub found around the Mediterranean?

Capers are usually picked every morning, because the youngest and smallest buds fetch the highest prices.

The papery green cones that give beer its bitterness and aroma are the flowers of which plant?

Hops come as separate male and female plants, and growers keep only the females, because pollinated seeds are unwanted in brewing.