Houseplant Trivia
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98 free Houseplant trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Why does a monstera have holes? Which houseplant breathes at night? Who smuggled the Chinese money plant to Norway in a suitcase? This houseplant trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers about the plants on your windowsill: monstera, pothos, snake plant, spider plant, peace lily, fiddle-leaf fig, rubber plant, ZZ plant, philodendron, African violet, moth orchid, Boston fern, jade plant, string of pearls, poinsettia, air plants and more. The questions mix identification and origins with the science of keeping things alive indoors: etiolation, root rot, fungus gnats, why succulents open their stomata after dark, and what the famous NASA clean-air study did and did not show. There is history too, from Wardian cases and Victorian fern mania to Boston fern shipments and Dutch nurseries. It suits a plant-swap party, a garden-club round, or a quiet test of whether you know your Ficus lyrata from your Ficus elastica. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on each species and topic, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where is Monstera deliciosa native to?
Southern Mexico to Panama
Southern Mexico to Panama is its natural range, where it climbs rainforest trees to around 20 metres; in a living room the same vine usually stops at about two.
Q 02What does the specific epithet 'deliciosa' in Monstera deliciosa refer to?
Its edible fruit
Its edible fruit earned the species the name deliciosa: when fully ripe it tastes like a mix of pineapple and banana, but unripe fruit is full of needle-like calcium oxalate crystals.
Q 03Golden pothos is native to which island?
Mo'orea in French Polynesia
Mo'orea in French Polynesia, one of the Society Islands, is its native home; from that single island it has become one of the most popular houseplants in North America.
Q 04Why is pothos nicknamed 'devil's ivy'?
It stays green even when kept in the dark
It stays green even when kept in the dark and is almost impossible to kill, hence 'devil's ivy'; the one thing it refuses to do in a pot is flower.
Q 05Where does the spider plant, Chlorophytum comosum, come from?
South Africa
South Africa's coasts are among its homes, part of a range that runs north through tropical Africa; its arching stems carry plantlets that droop to the soil and root where they land.
Q 06Dracaena trifasciata, or mother-in-law's tongue, was known under what genus name until 2017?
Sansevieria
Sansevieria was its genus until 2017, when it was reclassified as a Dracaena; it comes from tropical Africa and tolerates such low light that it suits the dimmest corner of a room.
Q 07When does Dracaena trifasciata open its stomata to exchange gases?
Only at night
Only at night: it uses crassulacean acid metabolism, a drought adaptation shared with many succulents, keeping stomata shut by day to save water and opening them after dark to take in carbon dioxide.
Q 08Which houseplant's tough leaf fibres earned it the old name 'bowstring hemp'?
Snake plant
Snake plant leaves yield a strong fibre once used for bowstrings; outdoors it is less welcome, and it is regarded as an environmental weed in parts of Australia.
Q 09Is the peace lily a true lily?
No, it is an aroid in the family Araceae
No, it is an aroid in the family Araceae, a cousin of the philodendrons; true lilies can cause kidney failure in cats, while its calcium oxalate crystals burn the mouth without that danger.
Q 10The white 'petal' of a peace lily is actually what?
A spathe, a modified leaf
A spathe, a modified leaf, wraps the spadix, the cream-coloured spike that carries the plant's real flowers.
Q 11Ficus lyrata's common name comes from its leaves resembling which object?
A fiddle
A fiddle is the shape behind 'fiddle-leaf fig', whose violin-like leaves can reach 45 cm; the plant sold for living rooms grows into a tree of nine metres or more outdoors.
Q 12Ficus lyrata, a 2010s houseplant craze, grows wild in which region's rainforests?
West Africa
West Africa is home to Ficus lyrata, a rainforest tree there; grown indoors it stays a fraction of that size and rarely flowers or fruits.
Q 13In Meghalaya, India, the roots of Ficus elastica are trained into what?
Living bridges
Living bridges are grown by Khasi and Jaintia villagers, who guide the tree's aerial roots across streams until they knit into spans strong enough to walk on; some have stood for centuries.
Q 21Which US city gives its name to a classic houseplant fern, an arching form of the tropical sword fern?
Boston
Boston is where the arching form is said to have been spotted in 1894, in a shipment of ordinary sword ferns sent from Philadelphia; the wild species holds its fronds stiffly upright.
Q 22Which nickname does the jade plant, Crassula ovata, share with the Malabar chestnut, Pachira aquatica?
Money tree
Money tree is a nickname both the jade plant and Pachira aquatica carry, each sold as a bringer of wealth; Crassula ovata is a succulent in the stonecrop family, while Pachira is a mallow relative.
Q 23Which hardy houseplant appears in the title of a 1936 George Orwell novel about rejecting middle-class respectability?
Aspidistra
Q 14Aloe vera originates in which region?
The Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is where Aloe vera originated; carried around the world for its soothing gel, it now grows wild from North Africa to the Canary Islands.
Q 15The ZZ plant stores water in what kind of underground structure?
A potato-like rhizome
A potato-like rhizome beneath the soil stores water, letting the ZZ plant ride out months of drought in its native eastern Africa; the fleshy leaf stalks store more.
Q 16Lithops, tiny desert succulents grown as novelty houseplants, are camouflaged to look like what?
Pebbles
Pebbles are the disguise: when the botanist William Burchell found the first one in 1811, he took it for an oddly shaped brown stone until he looked closer.
Q 17The name Philodendron comes from Greek words meaning what?
Love tree
Love tree, from Greek philo (love) and dendron (tree), describes how many species climb trees as hemiepiphytes; the genus is the second-largest in the arum family.
Q 18What is the largest genus in the arum family, ahead of Philodendron?
Anthurium
Anthurium is the arum family's largest genus, native to the tropical Americas, where many species perch on trees as epiphytes; the waxy red flamingo flower is among the most widely grown.
Q 19African violets are native to which country?
Tanzania
Tanzania's Usambara Mountains are where Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire collected the seeds he sent home in 1892; the genus was named Saintpaulia after him, and it is unrelated to true violets.
Q 20The orchid genus Phalaenopsis is named for its resemblance to what?
A moth
A moth is the likeness: Carl Ludwig Blume built the name in 1825 from the Greek for 'moth' and 'appearance', as the flowers are said to resemble moths in flight; in the wild the plants perch on trees.
Aspidistra is the plant in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, where Orwell makes the neglect-proof parlour favourite a symbol of the stuffy middle-class life his hero Gordon Comstock tries to reject.
Q 24Pilea peperomioides is harmless to touch, unlike which best-known relatives?
Nettles
Nettles are its relatives in the family Urticaceae, though its smooth leaves carry no stinging hairs; it grows so easily from cuttings that owners hand them to friends, hence the name friendship plant.
Q 25String of pearls was long classed with the weed groundsel; which plants are its relatives?
Daisies
Daisies are its relatives in the family Asteraceae; its pea-shaped leaves cut water loss by exposing as little surface as possible, and a translucent 'window' on each lets light inside.
Q 26The poinsettia takes its English name from whom?
The first US minister to Mexico
The first US minister to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, sent the plant north in the 1820s; the Aztecs had cultivated it, calling it cuetlaxochitl.
Q 27How dangerous are poinsettias to pets and children?
Mild upset at worst
Mild upset at worst: a review of more than 20,000 poison-centre cases found no deaths; a nibble may bring a brief stomach upset or a rash from the sap, and the ASPCA calls the plant's toxicity over-rated.
Q 28Aglaonema, a shade-tolerant houseplant from the forests of tropical Asia, is commonly called what?
Chinese evergreen
Chinese evergreen is the common name for Aglaonema, which grows in the shade of humid tropical forests; that upbringing is why it tolerates the low light of an ordinary room.
Q 29Air plants, Tillandsia, absorb water through what specialized structures on their leaves?
Trichomes
Trichomes, tiny silvery hairs coating the leaves, soak up water and nutrients from rain, mist and fog; the wiry roots do little more than hold the plant to its perch.
Q 30Which houseplant is nicknamed 'dumb cane' because chewing its stem can leave a person temporarily unable to speak?
Dieffenbachia
Dieffenbachia cells are armed with needle-like calcium oxalate crystals that inflame the tongue and throat when chewed; the genus honours Joseph Dieffenbach, a head gardener in Vienna.