100 Fun Facts About Trees

What process do trees use to convert sunlight into energy?

Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants, including trees, use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create glucose (sugar) for food and release oxygen as a byproduct.

What term describes trees and shrubs that seasonally shed all their leaves, usually in autumn?

Deciduous, from Latin deciduus, 'falling off': deciduous trees such as oaks and maples drop all their leaves each autumn, whereas evergreens such as pines keep foliage year-round.

Roughly how old is Methuselah, the Great Basin bristlecone pine in California's White Mountains?

Over 4,600 years: Edmund Schulman's 1957 core sample dated Methuselah at about 4,789 years old then, putting its germination near 2830 BCE. Prometheus, felled in 1964, was at least 4,862.

What part of a tree primarily transports water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves?

The xylem is a vascular tissue in trees that forms a network of tubes, primarily responsible for conducting water and dissolved minerals upwards from the roots to the rest of the plant, including the leaves.

Which common product is primarily made from wood pulp?

Bleaching the pulp is what gives paper its whiteness, a property the trade treats as distinct from brightness.

What science dates a tree's growth rings to the exact year they formed?

Dendrochronology matches ring-width patterns across samples to assign each ring a calendar year; A. E. Douglass founded the method at the University of Arizona in the early 1900s.

Which species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching over 115 metres?

The species has a small natural range and an extremely long lifespan, and many of the biggest individuals carry official names of their own.

General Sherman, the largest known living single-stem tree by volume, is which species?

Giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum): General Sherman, in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park, California, has a trunk volume of about 1,487 cubic metres and stands about 84 metres tall.

Which living plant tissue carries sugars made in photosynthesis out to the rest of the plant?

The process is called translocation, and it is carried out by cells known as sieve tube elements.

Which evergreen tree's thick outer bark is stripped every nine to twelve years without harming it?

Cork oak bark can be harvested every nine to twelve years without harming the tree once it is about 25 years old; it also goes into flooring.

Genomic analysis suggests the baobab genus originated on which island, home to six of its eight species?

Madagascar: six of the eight Adansonia species are endemic to the island, and a 2024 genome study in Nature traced the genus's origin there, with later dispersal to mainland Africa and Australia.

Pando, often called the world's heaviest single organism, is a Utah clonal colony of which tree?

Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides): Pando's roughly 47,000 genetically identical stems share one root system covering about 106 acres of Fishlake National Forest, Utah, with a total mass estimated near 6,000 tonnes.

Six ginkgo trees famously survived which 1945 event while growing 1 to 2 km from its centre?

The Hiroshima atomic bomb: six ginkgos within about 2 km of the hypocentre, including one at Hosen-bo temple, survived the 6 August 1945 blast and are counted among the city's hibakujumoku, the survivor trees.

The banyan fig is the national tree of which country?

India's national tree is the banyan, Ficus benghalensis, whose species name refers to Bengal; it spreads by aerial prop roots that thicken into new trunks, and the name banyan is applied to all figs with that habit.

Hyperion, the tallest known living tree at nearly 116 metres, was discovered in which year?

2006: Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor found Hyperion on 25 August 2006 in a remote part of Redwood National Park, California; it measured 115.55 metres then, and later surveys put it near 116 metres.

Which Canadian province, on its own, accounts for about 72% of the world's maple syrup output?

Quebec alone produces 72% of global output; maples are usually tapped only once they reach 30 to 40 years old, and Canadian syrup must be at least 66% sugar.

'True cinnamon', Cinnamomum verum, takes its trade name Ceylon from which country?

Sri Lanka was called Ceylon until 1972, and Cinnamomum verum is native to the island; most cinnamon in international commerce is actually cassia from other Cinnamomum species, all of it harvested as inner bark.

Which Caribbean tree, the 'little apple of death', blisters skin if you stand under it in rain?

Manchineel (Hippomane mancinella), Spanish 'manzanilla de la muerte': its milky sap blisters skin, so rain dripping through the canopy burns. Every part is toxic, yet its roots stabilise Caribbean beaches and Florida lists it as endangered.

The Major Oak, folklore's shelter for Robin Hood and his Merry Men, stands in which English woodland?

Sherwood Forest's Major Oak, near Edwinstowe in Nottinghamshire, is an English oak estimated at 800 to 1,000 years old with a trunk girth of about 10 metres; its heavy limbs have been propped with supports since 1908.

Old Tjikko, a clonal spruce roughly 9,550 years old, grows in which country?

Sweden: Old Tjikko, a Norway spruce on Fulufjället in Dalarna, has a root system carbon-dated to about 9,550 years; its visible trunk is only a few centuries old, regrown from roots that survived since the last ice age.

Jōmon Sugi, an ancient cryptomeria possibly over 7,000 years old, grows on which Japanese island?

Yakushima: Jōmon Sugi grows at about 1,300 metres on the island south of Kyushu, with a trunk girth of 16.4 metres; age estimates range from 2,170 to over 7,000 years, and Yakushima became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.

The Tree of Ténéré, once the most isolated tree on Earth, was knocked down in 1973 by what?

A truck: in 1973 a reportedly drunk Libyan truck driver hit the lone acacia in Niger's Ténéré desert, a tree so well known it appeared on Michelin maps at 1:4,000,000; its remains went to the national museum in Niamey.

The Sycamore Gap tree, illegally felled in 2023, stood beside which ancient structure?

Hadrian's Wall: the sycamore stood in a dip beside the wall near Crag Lough, Northumberland, featured in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and won England Tree of the Year in 2016; the stump sent up new shoots in 2024.

The Wollemi pine, known only from fossils until 1994, grows wild in which country?

Australia: David Noble found the Wollemi pine in 1994 in sandstone gorges of Wollemi National Park, about 150 km north-west of Sydney; fewer than a hundred mature trees survive there and the species is critically endangered.

The dragon blood tree, named for its red resin, is the national tree of which country?

Yemen: Dracaena cinnabari is endemic to the Socotra archipelago in the Arabian Sea, governed by Yemen; its upturned umbrella crown catches mist, and its red resin was traded for centuries as 'dragon's blood' dye and medicine.

El Árbol del Tule, the tree with the world's stoutest trunk, grows in which country?

Mexico: El Árbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress, stands in the churchyard of Santa María del Tule, Oaxaca; its trunk measured 42 metres around in 2005, and its Nahuatl name ahuehuete is usually glossed as 'old man of the water'.

Dutch elm disease is caused by a fungus spread from tree to tree by which insects?

Bark beetles: elm bark beetles of the genus Scolytus carry spores of the Ophiostoma fungus from breeding galleries in dead elm bark to healthy trees; the disease is named for the Dutch scientists who identified it from 1921.

The Angel Oak, a 400 to 500-year-old southern live oak, stands near which US city?

Charleston: the Angel Oak stands on Johns Island, South Carolina, about 12 miles from downtown Charleston; its longest branch stretches 187 feet and its canopy shades about 17,200 square feet.

Eucalyptus deglupta, with its multicoloured peeling bark, is the only eucalypt native to which habitat?

Rainforest: Eucalyptus deglupta grows in humid lowland rainforest of the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, the only eucalypt that usually lives in rainforest and the only one whose natural range crosses into the Northern Hemisphere.

Protestant Christians in Livonia, now Estonia and Latvia, and which other Central European region developed the decorated Christmas tree?

Germany's early trees were hung with paper roses, apples and wafers, and Moravian Christians added candles.

The Japanese word bonsai literally means what?

Pot planting: bonsai is written 盆栽, bon meaning tray or shallow pot and sai meaning planting; related container arts include China's penjing, Korea's bunjae and Vietnam's hòn non bộ.

Salicin, the precursor of aspirin, is found in the bark of which tree?

Willow: salicin takes its name from Salix, the willow genus; willow-bark preparations eased pain for at least 2,400 years before Bayer's Felix Hoffmann synthesised pure acetylsalicylic acid in 1897.

Which country produces about half of the world's cork each year?

Portugal produces about half of the world's cork, mostly from the montado oak woodlands of the Alentejo; Spain is second with roughly a third, and Portugal's Amorim group is the largest cork company.

What is the winged, spinning fruit of maples, ashes and elms called?

Samara: a dry, winged fruit that spins as it falls, carrying a single seed away from the parent tree; maples bear paired samaras nicknamed helicopters, while ashes and elms bear single ones.

The genus Eucalyptus contains roughly how many species?

More than 700: the genus Eucalyptus holds over 700 species, almost all native to Australia, where every state and territory has endemic species; their leaves carry oil glands that yield aromatic eucalyptus oil.

The tree whose latex is the main source of natural rubber is native to which region?

The Amazon basin: Hevea brasiliensis is native to the Amazon rainforest of Brazil and its neighbours; seeds Henry Wickham shipped to Kew in 1876 founded the Southeast Asian plantations that came to dominate rubber production.

The first Arbor Day, proposed by J. Sterling Morton, saw an estimated one million trees planted in 1872 in which US state?

Nebraska City's J. Sterling Morton proposed the holiday to the state board of agriculture, and the first one fell on April 10, 1872.

The olive was first cultivated between 6,000 and 4,000 BC, most likely in which region?

The Levant: genetic and archaeological evidence places the olive's domestication in the eastern Mediterranean Levant roughly 6,000 to 4,000 BC; Crete grew olives commercially by 3000 BC, and Phoenician traders spread the crop westwards.

The cacao tree's genus name Theobroma comes from Greek meaning what?

Food of the gods: Linnaeus coined Theobroma from Greek theos, god, and broma, food; the tree's stimulant theobromine is a relative of caffeine, and the small evergreen ranges from southern Mexico to the Amazon.

Botanically, the fruit of the coconut palm is classified as what?

A drupe: the coconut has a fibrous husk (mesocarp) around a hard stony shell (endocarp) enclosing the seed, the same structure as a peach or olive, so botanically it is a drupe rather than a true nut.

Which trees survive tidal saltwater using salt filters and aerial roots called pneumatophores, with their greatest diversity in Southeast Asia?

Mangroves use pneumatophores to absorb gases directly from the air and nutrients such as iron from inhospitable soil; their greatest diversity is in the Indonesian archipelago.

A 2015 study estimated the number of trees on Earth at roughly how many?

3 trillion: Thomas Crowther's 2015 Nature study estimated about 3.04 trillion trees worldwide, roughly eight times the earlier 400 billion figure, and reckoned some 15 billion are felled each year against about 5 billion planted.

Which biome, also called boreal forest, is the world's largest land biome?

Taiga, or boreal forest, spans Canada, Scandinavia and Russia and holds about 29% of the world's forest cover, which makes it the largest land biome; its conifers race to grow in the short northern summer.

Alder trees host nitrogen-fixing bacteria of which genus in nodules on their roots?

Frankia, a filamentous actinobacterium, forms nodules on alder roots and fixes atmospheric nitrogen for the tree; the partnership lets alders colonise low-nitrogen ground such as gravel bars and mine spoil.

Fossils found in New York state in 2007 suggest the first tree may have been which genus?

Wattieza: fossils from Gilboa, New York, described in Nature in 2007, showed a cladoxylopsid with a tall trunk and a palm-like crown of fronds, dating to the Middle Devonian about 385 million years ago and reproducing by spores.

In T. R. E. Southwood's 1961 survey, how many insect species were recorded on British oaks?

284: Southwood's 1961 survey counted 284 insect species on native oak, more than on any other British tree (willow came second with 266); non-native sycamore supported only 15, though its bark is rich in lichens.

The Khasi people of Meghalaya, India, grow living root bridges from the roots of which plant?

The rubber fig, Ficus elastica: Khasi and Jaintia villagers guide its pliable aerial roots across streams, often through hollowed betel-palm trunks, until they root on the far bank; a bridge takes 15 years or more to bear weight.

In Hindu tradition, which divine tree emerged from the churning of the ocean of milk?

Kalpavriksha, the wish-fulfilling tree, rose from the Samudra Manthana, the churning of the ocean of milk, alongside treasures such as the cow Kamadhenu; devotees tie threads around trees identified with it and place icons beneath them.

What is the theoretical maximum height a tree can reach before it can no longer lift water?

About 120 to 138 metres: studies of the tallest redwoods and Douglas firs put the ceiling set by gravity and friction on water transport between roughly 122 and 138 metres, beyond which the topmost leaves would desiccate.

The tallest known broad-leaved tree, a mountain ash of 99.8 metres, grows where?

Eucalyptus regnans is the only flowering plant that approaches the heights of the Californian redwoods.

New Zealand's giant Tāne Mahuta is named after the Māori god of forests and what else?

Birds: Tāne Mahuta, 'Lord of the Forest', is named for Tāne, the Māori god of forests and birds who pushed sky and earth apart; the kauri stands in Northland's Waipoua Forest and may be 1,250 to 2,500 years old.

Which country's flag shows a green cedar tree at its centre?

Lebanon's flag, adopted on 7 December 1943 shortly before independence from France, bears a green cedar of Lebanon between two red bands; a 1990 constitutional amendment specified that the cedar must be entirely green.

Which genus of conifers is unusual in dropping all its needles every autumn?

Larch (Larix): unlike most conifers, larches turn gold and shed every needle each autumn; Dahurian and Siberian larch dominate vast tracts of Siberian taiga, and European larch is widely planted for timber.

Ginkgo biloba, sole survivor of a 290-million-year-old order, has what common name?

Maidenhair tree: the name comes from the fan-shaped leaves, which resemble the leaflets of maidenhair fern; Ginkgo biloba sits alone in its own division, Ginkgophyta, and its closest living relatives are the cycads.

The cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol) was first extracted from the bark of which tree?

Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia): paclitaxel was isolated from its bark in 1971 after a 1962 screening sample, and because stripping the bark killed the tree, supply stayed scarce until semisynthesis from yew needles arrived in the 1990s.

Quinine, long the only effective malaria treatment, comes from the bark of which trees?

Cinchona: the Andean trees were known as fever trees, and Jesuits carried 'Peruvian bark' to Europe in the 1630s; Dutch plantations of Cinchona ledgeriana in Java later yielded bark with 8 to 13 percent quinine.

Frankincense is an aromatic resin tapped from trees of which genus?

The word comes from Old French franc encens, meaning high-quality incense, and several Boswellia species grow in Somalia and southern Arabia.

Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 raft Kon-Tiki was built from logs of which tree?

Balsa: Heyerdahl lashed nine balsa logs cut in Ecuador into the raft and sailed about 8,000 km from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days; balsa is among the lightest commercial timbers, and its name is the Spanish word for raft.

Which dense, self-lubricating wood was used for ship propeller-shaft bearings, including on USS Nautilus?

Lignum vitae, from Guaiacum trees of the Caribbean, is so resinous and dense (about 1,230 kg per cubic metre) that it served as self-lubricating bearings for ship propeller shafts and hydroelectric turbines, including the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.

Nutmeg and which other spice both come from the seed of the same Myristica fragrans tree?

Mace is the crimson aril around the seed, flattened and dried for 10 to 14 days until it turns pale orange or tan.

Cloves are which part of the Syzygium aromaticum tree?

Unopened flower buds: cloves are the flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, picked before they open once they have turned from pale green to bright red, then sun-dried; Indonesia, the top producer, burns most of its crop in kretek cigarettes.

The coco de mer palm, which bears the plant kingdom's largest seed, grows wild where?

Seychelles: Lodoicea maldivica grows wild only on the islands of Praslin and Curieuse; its double-lobed seed can weigh over 17 kg, the heaviest in the plant kingdom, and a fruit takes six to seven years to mature.

Which is the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, reaching as much as 55 kg?

Jackfruit: Artocarpus heterophyllus bears the largest tree-borne fruit, up to about 55 kg and nearly a metre long; each fruit is hundreds of fused flowers growing straight from the trunk, and a mature tree can yield around 200 a year.

Goats famously climb argan trees to eat the fruit and leaves in which country?

Morocco: argan trees (Argania spinosa) grow almost only in the country's south-west around Essaouira and Agadir, where goats climb them for the fruit and leaves; some roadside goat displays for tourists are staged by herders.

The monkey puzzle tree, Araucaria araucana, is the national tree of which country?

Chile: the monkey puzzle, called pehuén by the Mapuche, grows in the Andes of south-central Chile and neighbouring Argentina and is Chile's national tree; its edible seeds, piñones, are harvested like large pine nuts.

The dawn redwood, known only as a fossil until the 1940s, was found alive in which country?

China: Shigeru Miki described Metasequoia from fossils in 1941, the same year a forester noticed a huge living one at a village shrine in Modaoxi, Hubei; the Arnold Arboretum distributed seeds worldwide in 1948.

The Joshua tree of the Mojave Desert is commonly said to have been named by which group?

Mormon settlers: legend says Latter-day Saint pioneers crossing the Mojave in the mid-19th century saw Joshua raising his hands to heaven in the outstretched limbs, though no contemporary record of the naming survives; the plant is a yucca.

Southern Africa's kokerboom is named for a San practice of turning its branches into what?

Quivers: kokerboom is Afrikaans for 'quiver tree', because the San hollowed its light branches to hold arrows; it is actually a tree-sized aloe, moved to the genus Aloidendron in 2013, and forms a rare forest near Keetmanshoop, Namibia.

The Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, the oldest human-planted tree of known date, grows in which city?

Anuradhapura: the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi was planted in 288 BC from a cutting of the original Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, carried to Sri Lanka by Emperor Ashoka's daughter Sanghamitta, making it the oldest planted tree of known date.

Isaac Newton's apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor appears to be which apple variety?

Flower of Kent, a green cooking apple: the tree at Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire, blew down in a storm in the early 19th century and regrew from its roots; a grafted descendant was planted outside Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1954.

The Anne Frank tree in Amsterdam, which blew down in a 2010 storm, was what kind of tree?

Horse chestnut: Anne described the chestnut from the Secret Annex windows in her diary; after the diseased tree fell in August 2010, saplings grown from its conkers were planted at the US Capitol grounds and New York's 9/11 Memorial.

The Liberty Tree, site of the first defiance of the 1765 Stamp Act, stood in which city?

Loyalists cut it down for firewood during the Siege of Boston in 1775, and one soldier was killed in the process.

In 1687 colonists hid their royal charter inside the Charter Oak in which city?

Hartford: during a tense 1687 meeting with Governor Edmund Andros the candles were doused and Connecticut's charter vanished, reputedly hidden in a hollow white oak in Hartford; the oak fell in 1856 and appears on the state's 1999 quarter.

Austin's 500-year-old Treaty Oak nearly died in 1989 after a vandal did what to it?

Poisoned with herbicide: in 1989 Paul Cullen poured the herbicide Velpar around the oak, enough to kill 100 trees; children sent get-well cards, Ross Perot signed a blank cheque for the rescue, and the tree survived with a much-reduced crown.

Prometheus, a bristlecone pine aged over 4,800 years, was cut down in 1964 in which state?

Nevada: graduate student Donald Currey and Forest Service staff felled Prometheus on Wheeler Peak in 1964 for research, then counted over 4,800 rings, which made it the oldest known non-clonal tree at the time.

Sicily's Castagno dei Cento Cavalli, record holder for greatest tree girth, grows on which volcano?

Mount Etna: the Hundred Horse Chestnut grows on the volcano's eastern slope near Sant'Alfio; its circumference measured 57.9 metres in 1780, a Guinness record for girth, and legend says a queen and her 100 knights sheltered beneath it.

Which city has given London its Trafalgar Square Christmas tree every year since 1947?

Oslo has sent a tree from its forests to Trafalgar Square every year since 1947 in thanks for British support during the Second World War; the tree is usually 50 to 60 years old and over 20 metres tall.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York is usually which species?

Norway spruce: nearly every Rockefeller Center tree since the first one in 1933 has been a Norway spruce, typically 69 to 100 feet tall, donated by a family in the north-eastern US and topped since 2004 by a Swarovski star.

The name of Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse cosmology, is generally taken to mean what?

Drasill means horse and Yggr is one of Odin's names, so the name is read as a kenning for the gallows on which Odin hanged himself.

The US capital's famous Tidal Basin cherry trees were a 1912 gift from which city's mayor?

Tokyo: Mayor Yukio Ozaki sent 3,020 cherry trees in 1912 after a 1910 shipment of 2,000 was burned when inspectors found insects and nematodes; First Lady Helen Taft planted the first two on 27 March 1912.

The Quindío wax palm of the Andes, which can reach 45 metres, is the tallest recorded example of which plant group?

Monocot is the group, which includes palms; its leaves were once cut in huge numbers for Palm Sunday, killing young palms, until campaigns and law enforcement curbed the practice.

Bahrain's 400-year-old Tree of Life, standing alone in the desert, is what kind of tree?

Mesquite: the Tree of Life is a Prosopis cineraria, a mesquite also called ghaf, standing 9.75 metres high with no other major tree nearby; how it finds water is debated, and it draws around 65,000 visitors a year.

Sam Van Aken's grafted 'Tree of 40 Fruit' bears forty varieties from which genus?

Prunus: all forty are stone fruits (plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, nectarines, almonds) grafted onto one rootstock from a closing heritage orchard in Geneva, New York, of more than 250 varieties; they ripen in sequence from July to October.

The root bark of which North American tree was the traditional base of root beer?

Sassafras: its root bark flavoured traditional root beer until the FDA banned sassafras oil from mass-produced foods in 1960 over the carcinogen safrole; modern root beer uses safrole-free extract or other flavourings.

The Douglas fir's genus name, Pseudotsuga, literally means what?

False hemlock: Pseudotsuga combines Greek pseudo, false, with tsuga, the Japanese name for hemlock; despite its English name the Douglas fir is not a true fir (Abies), and it is the tallest tree in the pine family.

Which tree do Northwest Coast peoples traditionally carve into totem poles and canoes?

Western redcedar (Thuja plicata): its light, rot-resistant, straight-grained wood splits into planks and is carved into totem poles, dugout canoes and bentwood boxes; many First Nations call it the Tree of Life, and its bark is woven into baskets.

Malus sieversii, the main wild ancestor of the domestic apple, grows mainly in which country?

Kazakhstan: Malus sieversii forms wild apple forests in the Tian Shan foothills around Almaty, whose old name Alma-Ata is often glossed as 'father of apples'; a 2010 genome sequence confirmed it as the domestic apple's main ancestor.

Serotinous cones on some pines and sequoias stay sealed until triggered to open by what?

This fire-mediated release is called pyriscence, and it is extremely common among the Proteaceae of South Africa and Australia.

Which cotton-like seed-pod fibre of Ceiba pentandra was long used to stuff mattresses?

Kapok: the silky floss from Ceiba pentandra seed pods is buoyant and water-resistant, so it filled mattresses and life jackets before synthetics; the tree is native to the tropical Americas and West Africa but is grown mainly in Southeast Asia.

The tulip tree, Liriodendron, is a close relative of which flowering trees?

Magnolias: Liriodendron belongs to the magnolia family, Magnoliaceae; only two species survive, one in eastern North America and one in China and Vietnam, and the American tulip tree can top 58 metres, among the tallest eastern hardwoods.

Canada's red-and-white Maple Leaf flag officially appeared in which year?

1965: the Maple Leaf flag was first raised on 15 February 1965 after Lester Pearson's 1964 parliamentary committee chose George Stanley's design, based on the Royal Military College flag, over two rivals including the 'Pearson Pennant'.

Neem, the evergreen source of neem oil, is a relative of which prized timber tree?

Mahogany: neem (Azadirachta indica) belongs to the mahogany family, Meliaceae, along with chinaberry, with which it is easily confused, though neem leaves are singly pinnate while chinaberry leaves are doubly or triply pinnate.

By the 1890s, 70% of English oil varnishes used fossil gum from which New Zealand tree?

Kauri: fossilised kauri gum, dug from old swamps and hillsides of Northland, was exported mainly for varnish, with pale gold lumps the most prized; from about 1910 the lower grades went into linoleum.

The bald cypress, famous for its woody 'knees', became which state's official tree in 1963?

Louisiana adopted the bald cypress as its state tree in 1963; the swamp conifer sends up woody 'knees' from its roots, and its rot-resistant heartwood is prized for fence posts, doors, flooring and caskets.

Figs are pollinated by tiny wasps that enter the developing fruit through what opening?

The ostiole: a female fig wasp squeezes through the tiny ostiole at the fig's tip, usually tearing off her wings and antennae, lays her eggs inside and dies; the crunchy bits in a ripe fig are seeds, not wasps.

Brazil nut pods are gnawed open and their seeds buried for later by which rodent?

Agouti: the rodent's chisel-like teeth can open the woody Brazil nut pod, and it buries surplus seeds, some of which sprout; the trees fruit almost only in intact forest because only a few large-bodied bees can pollinate their flowers.

Nearly half of the world's naturally occurring teak forest grows in which country?

Myanmar holds nearly half of the world's natural teak forest, about 16 million hectares, and long supplied the prized 'Burma teak' floated down the Irrawaddy; molecular studies point to two genetic origins, in India and in Myanmar and Laos.

Which marsupial lives mostly on eucalyptus leaves, which are toxic to most other mammals?

With over 600 eucalypt species available, koalas strongly prefer around 30, and they sleep up to twenty hours a day on the low-energy diet.

The silver birch, whose boughs are used for sauna whisking, is which country's national tree?

Finland's national tree is the silver birch; in Finnish saunas bundles of birch twigs, called vihta in the west and vasta in the east, are used for whisking, and burled 'curly birch' is prized for carving and veneer.

The domestic silkworm feeds almost exclusively on the leaves of which tree?

White mulberry (Morus alba): Bombyx mori larvae feed almost only on its leaves, drawn by the odorant cis-jasmone, and pass through five instars before spinning cocoons of a single silk thread up to about 900 metres long.