From a redwood taller than a 30-storey building to a pine that was already ancient when the pyramids rose, this worldwide trees quiz takes you on a fact-checked tour of the planet's most remarkable trees.
Trees are the largest and longest-lived organisms most of us will ever see, yet we often walk past them without a second thought. Some hold world records for height, bulk or age. Others survived mass extinctions, nuclear blasts or millions of years of shifting continents. A few grow on just one island on Earth.
This quiz gathers 15 of those stories into a single challenge. Each question is a "specimen card" from a different corner of the world, and every answer comes with a short field note so you learn something whether you guess right or wrong. When you finish, keep the streak going: take today's Bing homepage quiz for another round of general knowledge.
There is no timer and no sign-up. Read each specimen card, pick one of four answers, and the card is instantly stamped as identified or misidentified.
Each card locks after your first choice, so trust your instinct.
Every answer adds a growth ring to your tracker: green for correct, rust for a miss.
Your final score earns a rank, from Forest Floor Explorer to Old-Growth Legend.
"Biggest" means different things to tree scientists. A tree can be the tallest, the most massive, the widest or the oldest, and each title belongs to a different specimen. Several of the most famous record holders grow in the western United States, where cool fog, deep soil and long protection inside national parks have let giants reach their full potential.
| Record | Tree | Species | Location | Key figure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tallest | Hyperion | Coast redwood | Redwood National Park, USA | About 116 m (380 ft) |
| Largest by volume | General Sherman | Giant sequoia | Sequoia National Park, USA | About 1,487 m³ of trunk |
| Oldest individual | Methuselah | Great Basin bristlecone pine | White Mountains, USA | More than 4,800 years |
| Stoutest trunk | Árbol del Tule | Montezuma cypress | Oaxaca, Mexico | About 42 m around |
| Heaviest clone | Pando | Quaking aspen | Utah, USA | About 6,000 tonnes, ~47,000 stems |
| Oldest planted (dated) | Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi | Sacred fig | Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka | Planted 288 BCE |
Figures are rounded and drawn from park agencies and peer-reviewed research listed in the Sources section. Tree measurements are revised as trees grow and new surveys are completed.
A tree can win one record and lose another: General Sherman is shorter than many redwoods, yet no living stem holds more wood.
Every inhabited continent has trees that shape its landscapes, economies and cultures. Here is one signature tree from each, chosen to show how differently trees have adapted to life on Earth.
Spread across the savannas south of the Sahara, the baobab stores water in its trunk and drops its leaves in the dry season. Its fruit pulp, leaves and bark fibre are all used by local communities.
The national tree of the Philippines produces durable, reddish timber and showers of yellow blossoms. Overharvesting for its prized wood has made it a conservation concern across its native range.
The cork oak woodlands of Portugal and Spain, called montado and dehesa, support farming, grazing and wildlife such as the endangered Iberian lynx, while their bark supplies wine stoppers and insulation.
Famous for maple syrup and brilliant autumn colour, the sugar maple anchors the hardwood forests of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. The maple leaf is Canada's national emblem.
This Amazon giant relies on large orchid bees for pollination and on agoutis to spread its seeds, which is why most Brazil nuts are gathered from wild forests rather than plantations.
Native to southeastern Australia, the mountain ash is the tallest flowering plant in the world, with living trees approaching 100 metres. It regenerates mainly from seed after intense bushfires.
Some trees alive today belong to lineages that shared the planet with dinosaurs. Scientists use the informal term "living fossil" for species that closely resemble ancient fossil relatives and have few or no close living cousins.
The ginkgo is the classic example. Fossils of ginkgo-like plants are found across the Northern Hemisphere, yet by modern times the lineage had shrunk to a single species surviving in China. Today it lines streets from Tokyo to New York because it tolerates pollution, compacted soil and pests remarkably well.
The Wollemi pine tells a more recent story. Botanists knew its family from fossil records, so the discovery of living trees in an Australian canyon in 1994 caused a sensation. To reduce the risk of disease and collectors, the wild site is kept secret, and nurseries propagated the species so it could be sold to the public. Every garden Wollemi pine adds a little insurance against the loss of the wild population.
The dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) has a similar arc. Described from fossils in 1941, it was found growing in central China shortly afterwards, and seeds sent abroad in the late 1940s helped establish it in parks worldwide.
Before 2015, the most widely quoted estimate was about 400 billion trees, based mainly on satellite images. When researchers added hundreds of thousands of ground-level forest measurements, the total jumped to roughly three trillion, showing how much satellites alone had underestimated tree density.
Counting species is harder still. Botanic Gardens Conservation International's GlobalTreeSearch database lists tens of thousands of known tree species, while the 2022 PNAS estimate suggests the true total is around 73,000. Tropical countries dominate the list: Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia are among the most tree-rich nations on Earth, and the tropics hold most of the species that still await a scientific name.
Height. Researchers usually survey tall trees from the ground with laser rangefinders, which calculate height from distance and angle. For record claims, climbers often confirm the result by ascending to the top and dropping a measuring tape to the base, since dense branches can fool a laser.
Volume. To find a tree's bulk, scientists measure trunk diameter at many heights and treat each section as a geometric shape, then add the pieces together. This is how General Sherman's volume is estimated.
Age. Dendrochronology, the study of tree rings, is the main tool for dating trees. In temperate climates a tree typically adds one ring per year, wide in good years and narrow in hard ones. Scientists use a thin hollow drill called an increment borer to extract a pencil-sized core, leaving the tree alive, and then count and match the rings against known patterns.
Tropical trees are trickier because many grow year-round without clear annual rings, so researchers may use radiocarbon dating instead. Clonal colonies such as Pando are different again: individual stems are relatively young, while the root system may be far older, so their age is estimated from growth rates and genetics rather than ring counts.
In 2024 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its Global Tree Assessment, the first major attempt to evaluate the extinction risk of the world's trees. It found that more than one in three assessed tree species, about 38%, are threatened with extinction.
The main pressures are clearing land for farming and development, unsustainable logging, invasive pests and diseases, and climate change. Island trees such as Socotra's dragon's blood tree are especially vulnerable because they have nowhere else to go.
The loss reaches far beyond the trees themselves. Forests store carbon, regulate rainfall, protect soils from erosion and provide habitat for a large share of land-based wildlife. Many communities also depend on trees for food, medicine, fuel and income.
There is real progress, too. Protected areas safeguard many record-breaking trees, seed banks and botanic gardens keep backup populations of rare species, and restoration projects are replanting native forests. Choosing certified wood and paper products, supporting local tree-planting groups and learning to recognize the trees in your own neighbourhood are simple ways to help.
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The tallest known living tree is Hyperion, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in Redwood National Park, California. It measures about 116 metres (roughly 380 feet).
The oldest known individual (non-clonal) tree is a Great Basin bristlecone pine nicknamed Methuselah in California's White Mountains. Tree-ring dating shows it is more than 4,800 years old.
A 2015 study published in Nature estimated that Earth holds about 3.04 trillion trees, or roughly 422 trees for every person alive at the time.
A 2022 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated there are about 73,000 tree species on Earth, including around 9,200 that scientists have not yet described.
Brazil has the most tree species of any country, with close to 9,000 recorded species according to Botanic Gardens Conservation International.
Every quiz answer and statistic on this page was checked against government agencies, peer-reviewed studies and recognized conservation organizations. Figures are rounded for readability. If you spot an error, please contact us and we will review and correct it.
Ryan Kimberly creates engaging quizzes, trivia games, and educational articles covering history, science, technology, business, and general knowledge. He aims to make learning fun, interactive, and accessible to everyone. He also works as a Finance Manager at a reputable IT company in Makati City, Philippines.