Know Your Roots! Quiz | Food for Kids

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Underneath a green leafy plant with little white flowers are lots of this starchy vegetable. It's usually white inside with a brownish or red skin. What is under all that dirt?

Answer: Potato

You can fry it, boil it, roast it, mash it, or make it into a tasty salad. Potato is not really a root, but an underground stem called a tuber. About the one thing you shouldn't ever do with a potato is to eat it when it's green.

2. Pulling up some feathery green tops you find a long, orange and pointy root. What is this root which you can eat raw?

Answer: Carrot

Carrots don't just come in orange. There are also white, yellow, red, and purple carrots. In the 17th century, Dutch growers bred the modern orange carrot, and this has become the most common. Carrots are nice raw, but cooking them a little helps bring out the beta-carotene that your body turns into vitamin A.

3. Under some more feathery green leaves you find another vegetable. It looks like a carrot, but it's white inside and out. What is this pointy root?

Answer: Parsnip

It's probably no surprise that parsnips are in the same plant family as carrots (so are parsley, celery, fennel, cilantro, and a number of other herbs and vegetables). They have a stronger flavour than carrots, and were sometimes used in medieval times as a sweetener. They're normally eaten mashed, roasted with a joint of meat, or cooked in a casserole.

4. This plant has heart-shaped green leaves and pretty white flowers with purple centres. Underneath are fat roots with pointy ends - they might be reddish-brown with yellow-orange insides, or purple with white insides. What are they?

Answer: Sweet Potato

In America and Europe, you most often see the orange-fleshed sweet potato, but where I live, in New Zealand, they are often white inside with purple skin. We call them by their Maori name, which is kumara. Sweet potatoes are nice roasted or mashed, or baked into a sweet or savoury pie.

5. Long, thin leaves grow out of the top of this bulbous vegetable. When you pull the bulb out of the ground you can see its little real roots on the bottom. Which vegetable makes me cry?

Answer: Onion

Onions release a gas (with a long chemical name I won't bore you with) that irritates the eyes. The easiest way to stop this is to put the onion in the fridge for an hour, before you intend to chop. It's also a good idea to chop the root bit off last. Having chopped your onions you can fry them up, or use them to give a nice savoury flavour to many dishes.

The other fun thing with onions is that science teachers like to get you to take the thin "skin" between the layers and look at it under a microscope so you can see the cells. Cool!

6. More long skinny leaves grow out of the top of this bulb, which splits into segments called cloves. What is this "stinky" vegetable?

Answer: Garlic

When I was young, we never had garlic - now I'd never be without some in the pantry. My son loves garlic bread - which is really easy to make. Just soften some butter, mix in some crushed garlic, herbs and seasoning. Spread it on the bread and warm it up in the oven. Yum! Garlic is also delicious roasted and in soups and stews, and it's very good for you.

7. This plant is very pretty with pink and white buds that bloom into yellow flowers. When the stems die down you can dig up the knobbly underground stems. What is this spicy "root" called?

Answer: Ginger

Some people grow ginger just because it looks nice! Many people think ginger is a root, but it's really an underground stem called a rhizome. Ginger is used fresh in Asian dishes, and to make ginger beer. It's also used dried and powdered to flavour gingerbread cookies and ginger cakes.

8. You might be able to guess what is growing here from the deep green leaves and the bright red stems. What is the name of this round red root?

Answer: Beetroot

There are lots of ways to cook beetroot. In Australia and New Zealand, many people like to have a slice of cooked beetroot in their burgers! And in Russia they make a soup called borscht from beetroot. Sugar beet was bred from beetroot in Prussia in the mid-eighteenth century, and soon became an important source of sugar.

9. Under a broad-leaved plant you find a heart-shaped root. Its top half is purple, and its bottom half is white. Some people think it's only good for animals, but what is this vegetable?

Answer: Turnip

Turnips were an important part of everyone's diet in Medieval England because potatoes hadn't been brought back from the New World. They're still part of Northern European cuisine, roasted, cooked in stews or mashed with potatoes. Baby turnips can be eaten raw in salads, and turnip greens are used in US Southern cooking. Oddly enough, a different variety of the very same species gives us Chinese cabbage!

10. Our last vegetable is very odd, because it grows underground in a pod! You may not think it's a vegetable, but what is hiding under that tree with yellow flowers?

Answer: Peanuts

The peanut actually belongs to the pea family and isn't a nut at all! The flowers look like pea flowers except they are yellow with red veins. After they die off, a special stalk behind the dead flower grows rapidly downwards and buries itself in the soil, where the fruits develop into peanuts. Really!

Source: Author Flamis

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor NatalieW before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Know Your Roots! Trivia Quiz

All of these vegetables grow underground. Some really are roots, others are just pretending. Let's dig up the garden and see what we can find!

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