Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Part of the reason for their expulsion was that God became concerned that, having eaten of this tree, they would be tempted to eat of yet another tree in the Garden. After their expulsion, this second tree was guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. What tree was this?
2. Tree and plant legends of all kinds feature in the mythology of ancient Greece. One very moving story concerns the sisters of Phaeton, son of Helios, who one day took his father's solar chariot out for an unauthorized spin. Unable to control the chariot, he drove it too close to the earth, scorching parts of the globe and causing terrible damage. To avert total disaster, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at the chariot which destroyed it and killed Phaeton, whose body fell into the sea. His sisters gathered around the shore and wept for him until Zeus, unable to bear their lamentations, turned them into poplar trees ringing the shore. Even as trees, however, they continued to weep. What were their tears transformed into?
3. The legends of Robin Hood and his merry men take place, of course, in Sherwood Forest. Of what tree is Robin Hood's famous bow made?
4. One of the most beloved children's books is Shel Silverstein's bittersweet story "The Giving Tree", which tell of a tree's love for a small boy and her willingness, as he grows to adulthood, to give him whatever he asks of her, even allowing herself to be cut down. Eventually, the boy becomes an old man and visits the tree, which offers her stump for him to sit on and rest. What kind of tree is "the giving tree"?
5. One of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales might well have been subtitled "The Giving Tree". It features a tree which, along with the two birds perched on its branches, provides the heroine of the story with anything that she asks for and eventually helps her to marry a prince. Which story features this remarkable tree?
6. The fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson include the bittersweet "The Fir Tree". At the beginning of the story, the fir tree is beautifully formed, but so tiny that a rabbit is able to jump right over it. What does the fir tree ultimately dream of becoming?
7. Speaking of fir trees, an old German folksong praises the perpetual green of the fir tree's leaves in both winter and summer. In the second and third verses of the song, the fir tree itself speaks explaining that it may well be green, since it has no father or mother, but only the good God to make it grow strong and green. This song was set to a tune widely used in both Germany and America, where it was, and is, used as the melody of the state song of Maryland. In the mid nineteenth century, its lyrics underwent a significant change and it is now indelibly associated with a major holiday with which it originally had no connection. Which of these songs is it?
8. Wagner's "Die Walkure" is the second of the four operas which comprise his "Ring der Nibelungen" It concerns the doings of his warrior daughters, the Valkyries, headed by Brunnhilde, and the Walsungs, (Siegmund and Sieglinde) his illegitimate half-mortal twins. The latter are separated in early childhood. Sieglinde is forced into marriage with a coarse, brutal man named Hunding. At her wedding, a mysterious one-eyed stranger appeared (her father Wotan) and hurled a sword at the trunk of an ash tree, where it became embedded. No one present could pull the sword loose. What is interesting about this tree, apart from the sword in its trunk, is its position in relation to Hunding's hut; where does the tree grow?
9. This stately piece of Baroque music, long a mainstay of the classical music repertoire, is actually an operatic aria, though it is often performed in an instrumental arrangement. As an aria, it has been sung (and recorded) by artists as diverse as Enrico Caruso, Kathleen Battle, countertenor David Daniels, and Luciano Pavarotti. Its composer was of German birth, but became an honored British subject and a court composer. Most people assume it to be either a religious piece or a dignified love song; in fact, it is a Persian ruler's expression of his unalterable affection for his...plane tree.
10. In Act IV, scene 3 of Shakespeare's tragedy "Othello", Desdemona has a premonition of her impending death (she will shortly be murdered by her jealous husband). She finds herself singing a mournful song she remembers from her childhood as having been sung by a handmaid of her mother's, who was abandoned by her lover. The refrain of the song mentions a tree associated with mourning and sadness. Another tragic Shakespearean heroine, Ophelia (in "Hamlet"), meets her end when a branch from the tree she is climbing breaks and sends her falling into the brook running below it, where she drowns. Ironically, it is the same tree featured in Desdemona's song. Which tree is it?
11. Shakespeare's "As You Like it" takes place, principally, in the forest of Arden. The play features a number of characters, including a banished Duke, his daughter, and his loyal retainers living an idyllic pastoral existence in the forest. The play's philosophy is summed up in the song "Under the greenwood tree", sung by Amiens in Act II, scene 5: "Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me and tune his merry note unto the sweet bird's throat". What turn of the century (19th-20th) English novelist used the first line of this song as the title for his book about life in an English village?
12. Which Russian author wrote the 1904 fin de siecle drama "The Cherry Orchard", which deals with the decline and fall of an aristocratic family?
13. The 1910 novel "Howard's End" by E.M. Forster also deals with the passing of an era, in this case the Edwardian era in England. Near the beginning of the novel Ruth Wilcox, the dying matriarch of the Wilcox family, tells young Margaret Schleigel of her love for Howard's End, her ancestral home (Margaret and her siblings are about to lose their own home). Ruth mentions a wych-elm tree on the property which has some quite unusual objects embedded in its bark. What are they?
14. A touching Roumanian-Jewish legend tells of an unhappily married young woman who pours her heart out one day in the woods to her visiting mother. Because the mother cannot be with her every day, she commands her daughter to come out once every week and tell her troubles to the tree they are standing under. The next time the mother comes to visit, the daughter looks much happier and more content. When the mother asks if things have improved in her marriage, the daughter replies that no, they are the same. Why, then, does the daughter seem happier?
15. In Charlotte Bronte's classic novel "Jane Eyre", the title character is hired as a governess at Thornfield, the home of Mr. Rochester. Her charge is a little French girl, Adele, who is Rochester's ward. During the course of the novel, she befriends her tormented employer and they grow to love each other. In Chapter 23, Rochester declares his feelings for Jane and asks her to marry him. She accepts his proposal, but cannot shake a feeling of foreboding. That night, something happens concerning a great horse-chestnut tree on the grounds of Thornfield which proves to be a portent of disaster; what is it?
16. "The Dream of the Red Chamber" ("Hong Lou Meng", a.k.a. "Story of the Stone"), attributed to Tsao Hsueh Chin, is thought by many to be possibly the greatest Chinese novel. It concerns the thwarted love of Pao'yu, the scion of the aristocratic Chia family, for Black Jade. Pao'yu, alternately pampered by his female relatives and terrorized (at one point almost killed) by his despotic father, finds his soul mate in his cousin, the delicate Black Jade. However, their union is not meant to be due to misadventure and family intrigue. At one point, the unusual behavior of a begonia tree growing near Pao'yu's pavillion is seen (correctly) as an ill omen; what happens to the tree?
17. One of the most beloved of Welsh folk ballads is this melancholy song in which a disconsolate lover sees, but cannot enjoy the beauties of nature, since his beloved "sleeps 'neath the green turf" down by this grove.
18. A old Cherokee legend tells of how the people of the Earth had decided that the world would be much better if there were no night-time. They petitioned the Ouga (Creator) who, at length, granted their request with predictably disastrous results. Once again, people petitioned the Creator, this time to take away the (by now) hated daytime and make it perpetually night-time, which proved equally disastrous. Eventually, people realized that they needed both day and night and asked that things be returned to the way they were. Sadly, many people had died during the time it took to learn this lesson, so the Creator decided to create a new tree in which to house their spirits. This tree was called a-tsi-na tlu-gv and was noted for the fragrance of its wood. What is the English name for this tree?
19. The English sovereign Henry VIII has often been credited with having composed the popular song "Greensleeves" for one of his mistresses. Musicologists generally agree that the song originated too late for Henry to have been the composer; however it is a fact that Henry (who was tutored in the courtly arts, including songwriting) did write a love song with lyrics not unlike those of "Greensleeves" in which he compares his undying and unchanging love (?!) to this evergreen tree, frequently associated with Christmas.
20. In Shakespeare's "Macbeth", the title character is told three prophecies by the witches: 1.) To beware Macduff, the thane of Fife 2.) That no man born of woman will ever defeat him, and 3.) That he will never be defeated until Birnam Wood itself comes to Dunsinane. Macbeth takes the latter two prophecies to mean that he is invincible, however he cannot understand why he is cautioned to "beware Macduff" since none born of woman can defeat him. In Act V, scene 5, while Macbeth is under siege from the forces under Malcolm, King Duncan's son, (which includes Macduff whose family have been massacred upon Macbeth's orders) a messenger delivers the incredible news that Birnam Wood has, indeed, been seen advancing upon Dunsinane. How did this amazing prophecy come true?
21. Daniel Defoe's classic novel "Robinson Crusoe" describes the struggle for survival of the title character after he finds himself alone on an island after a disastrous shipwreck. Having been born into a comfortable middle class existence, he finds the strength and the will to survive by his wits and the strength of his hands. In Chapter II he manages, with great difficulty, to cut down an extremely heavy tree known in Brasil as the ironwood tree and to carry a piece to his tent. What utilitarian object does he manage to fashion from it?
22. Edgar Allan Poe's detective novel "The Gold Bug" concerns the search for a buried treasure by one William Legrand. Formerly prosperous, Legrand has fallen on hard times and lives in seclusion on Sullivan's Island near Charleston, South Carolina, with his African servant, Jupiter. Having discovered a golden bug on a beach, Legrand draws a sketch of it on a piece of parchment which he had found nearby. When held near a fire, the parchment reveals the outline of a skull. Believing that the parchment contains a numerical code of some kind pointing to a buried treasure, Legrand convinces his friend (the story's narrator, who is unnamed) to join him and Jupiter on an expedition. At one point, they arrive at a huge tulip tree. Legrand orders Jupiter to climb, with the bug, up to the seventh bough. Jupiter climbs and goes almost to the very tip of the bough; what does he find there?
23. Trees can have their nefarious uses as well. In Daphne du Maurier's 1951 mystery novel "My Cousin Rachel" an English nobleman, Philip Ashley, falls in love with Rachel, the Italian widow of his beloved uncle Ambrose, even though Ambrose died believing that Rachel was trying to poison him. After Rachel abruptly refuses his marriage proposal, Philip falls violently ill. Although he recovers, apparently with Rachel's help, he comes to believe that she is poisoning him as well. His suspicions are strengthened when he comes across seed pods from a tree which he knows to be poisonous. What tree are they from?
24. One of the greatest wrongs in American history are the countless lynchings of African Americans during their struggle for freedom and civil rights. In 1938, a song written by a composer known only as "Lewis Allen" described the swinging bodies of lynching victims in terms both poetic and horrifying: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root./ Black body swinging in the Southern breeze/ Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." This song was actually written by Jewish schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol (Meeropol, once a member of the American Communist party, adopted the Rosenberg's sons after their execution). The song premiered at the Cafe society in Greenwich Village provoking a storm of controversy. Only Commodore records would agree to record it and no radio stations would play it. Despite all this, it reached #16 on the charts and played a decisive part in publicizing this heinous practice. What famous (and tragic) blues singer gave the first performance of this song?
25. Perhaps the most famous tree in literature is the title "character" of Betty Smith's beloved novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". The story concerns young Francie Nolan's determination to better herself and become a writer, despite a childhood of terrible poverty in the slums of Brooklyn in the early 1900s, an alcoholic father, and an overworked and frustrated mother. The tree of the title, growing through cement and cellar gratings in Francie's back yard, is symbolic of her stubborn determination to rise above her surroundings and defeat all obstacles. The tree of the title goes by the botanical name "ailanthus altissima"; what is its (highly symbolic) common name?
Source: Author
jouen58
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ozzz2002 before going online.
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