From Time Immemorial Trivia Quiz

Answer: Starch

Cycads are not actually palms, despite looking like them at first sight. They contain neurotoxins and so extensive processing is required leach these out before any useful food can be obtained. The quick-growing and non-toxic sago palm Mertoxylon sagu is the main source of sago. It is obtained from the spongy pith or trunk of the plants.

Most extant varieties of cycads evolved in the last 12 million years, although the lineage goes back perhaps 280 million years. They are slow-growing, long-lived (up to a 1,000 years) and can survive in relatively dry conditions.

Answer: Maidenhair Tree

The maidenhair tree is also known as the ginkgo. As for the other answers, they are all living fossil ferns (replace 'tree' with 'fern' and you get their common names). Just to confuse things, there is also maidenhair fern (or Adiantum), a genus of around 250 species.

Fossils of ginkgo ancestors as old as 270 million years of age (the Permian period) have been found. They had largely disappeared from the fossil record by 2.5 million years ago, apart from one area in central China. They were cultivated from 1100 AD in Chinese monasteries and palace gardens and have now been re-established around the world mainly as an ornamental tree.

The ginkgo nut is an esteemed Asian food and the leaf extract is sold as a food supplement said to support cognitive function. It is also a good candidate for bonsai and penjing styles of horticulture.

Answer: Beetles

The magnolia uses beetles for pollination purposes. The carpels in the flowers are particularly tough to minimise beetle damage, it is believed.

The ancient wasps were small enough to be candidates but were insect predators. They were also ancestors to the modern bee. The ancient bee switched to pollen at some point and there followed a period of co-evolution where some plants started producing nectar as food for bees to attract the bees for pollination purposes. The magnolia was not one of these, although they do produce a fragrant sugary solution which attracts beetles.

Answer: Piper nigrum

The tropical flowering vine Piper nigrum is the source of black, green, red and white pepper. Cretaceous-era fossils of the plant have been found in Colombia.

The fruit of the vine, known as a peppercorn, is picked unripe then cooked briefly before being dried to make the black peppercorn. Green pepper is the dried unripe fruit (with the colour preserved), red pepper is the dried ripe fruit (with the colour preserved) and white pepper is the seed from the ripe fruit.

The others are the bay tree (Laurus nobilis), used for its leaves, and fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) and cumin (Cuminum cyminum), used for their seeds.

Answer: Fire

Fire is essential for reproduction in most protea species. The species fall into two camps: reseeders and resprouters. The reseeders are killed by the fire, however the heat triggers the release of the seed bank held in the plant's canopy, allowing a new generation to be spawned. In resprouters, new growth comes from a woody root crown (or lignotuber) or from epicormic buds beneath thick bark. Protea cynaroides is a lignotuber resprouter.

The distribution of the protea across the southern hemisphere reflects its origins in the Gwandana supercontinent, which existed from the Neoproterozoic to the Jurassic.

Answer: Australia

Wollemi National Park is in New South Wales, Australia. Wollemi is an Aboriginal word meaning 'look around you, keep your eyes open and watch out'.

Some 80 mature trees and around 300 seedlings exist in two groves in slot canyons. They can now also be found in commercial nurseries and the like so their survival should be assured. Wollemi pines reproduce through wind pollination and also by self-coppicing (where many trunks spontaneously sprout from its base).

The trees go dormant over winter and produce protective white waxy caps over the growing tips. These caps are believed to have helped the species survive through many ice ages. Although it is a conifer, the tree is not a member of the pine family, despite its name.

Answer: The flowers are enclosed in an urn-like receptacle

The urn-like receptacle is called a synconium. The flowers line the inside surface of the immature 'fruit' and cannot be seen unless the fig is cut open. The wasp enters a small opening (the ostiole) to pollinate the flowers and deposit eggs. Depending on the species, there are between 50 and 7000 flowers within the synconium, each capable of producing a fruit containing a seed. The fig is considered to be both a multiple fruit (such as a pineapple) and an accessory fruit (such as a strawberry).

Figs (genus Ficus) have been around for at least 60 million years, with some extant species perhaps 40 million years. Ficus carica is the main species cultivated. Some commercial fig cultivars are parthenocarpic, producing seedless fruit without fertilisation and so the pollinating wasp is not necessary.

Answer: Water

Mangrove seeds from some species germinate whilst still on the parent tree so that it is a seedling (or propagule) which drops into the water. The propagule floats off to find somewhere suitable to take root. The propagules from some species change density after a period of days so that their orientation changes from horizontal to vertical and they sink to have more chance of taking root.

Mangrove swamps are species rich areas (both in flora and fauna) and fossil records indicate that they appeared from the late Cretaceous through the Early Tertiary in the Tethys Sea. The theory is that continental drift saw the redistribution of mangrove species to their present day locations. There are extant species appearing in the fossil record. Some 54 species from 20 genera are considered to be true mangrove plants, only being found in mangrove swamps.

Answer: Vanilla

The Vanilla orchid genus consists of around 110 species and the pods from the Vanilla planifolia vine is the main source of the flavouring. The plants are self-fertile however, unless they are hand-pollinated, less than one percent of the flowers are fertilised. The flowers only last for a day before dropping off.

There are something like 28,000 orchid species with another 100,000 hybrids and cultivars created by horticulturalists.

Answer: China

First described in 1941 from Mesozoic fossils no younger than 150 million years of age, this tree was common across the northern hemisphere at one time but considered extinct. The discovery of a living specimen coincidentally took place in 1941, although this was not published at the time. An American expedition in 1948 uncovered a valley of around 1,000 dawn redwood trees. Unlike its surviving American cousins, it is deciduous.

Although the tree is protected under Chinese law, the 1948 site habitat has been degraded somewhat. The tree has now been planted extensively worldwide. For example, starting in 1975, the world's longest dawn redwood avenue was created in China. This, the Picang Highway in the city of Pizhou, was originally 60 km long and involved a million dawn redwood trees.