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Chris' Quite Difficult Christmas Conservation Quiz


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At the OCV Christmas Party, we were set a tricky quiz by our Task Programmer, Chris Skepper. As OCVers are a competitive bunch who like being knowledgeable and don't like being wrong, the quiz went down very well. John Worth even tackled it on his own sitting on the 'naughty step' despite turning up late and not being eligible for a prize.

The star of the quiz was David Max who secured an emphatic win for his team thanks to his impressive knowledge of Latin species names and all things conservation-related.

The quiz is reprinted below for your enjoyment...Chris informs me that any quibbles, concerns, challenges or other forms of dispute about the answers should be directed straight to David Max. (Hope you don't mind David!)

Round 1 - Each answer is a nature reserve on which OCV have had a task:


A clue, or a decoy?
  1. Has a device for catching ducks.
  2. If you had nearly completed your stage coach journey from London to Oxford this is somewhere that highwaymen might lurk.
  3. Has the ancient Ickneid Way or Ridgeway close to its northern edge.
  4. Might have been named because it was the place Oxford colleges emptied their toilets.
  5. The ancient boundary of the city of Oxford passed an edge of this site.
  6. A Victorian landfill site, now largely young woodland, with possibly toxic waste still leaching into the Thames.
  7. A more modern landfill site with a pre-historic connection.
  8. A place for unloading boats where perhaps OCV eliminated Ragwort for good.
  9. An Island with fritillaries.
  10. Somewhere with a poem on a tree.
  11. A place where OCV cleared a moat.
  12. An SSSI in East Oxford.
  13. A place with a sunken path through a Yew wood.
  14. A tree museum.
  15. A place with chalky banks popular with a variety of hymenoptera.


Round 2 - Each answer is a type of tree or plant that OCV, clear, plant or try to protect. One point for the common name, a bonus point for a correct Latin name:


'You' may find the 1st question 'taxing' (Photo: Didier Descouens, Wiki Commons)
  1. A poisonous tree found in churchyards, used for making longbows.
  2. A tree which makes particularly bad firewood, but is favoured by jelly-ear fungus and has a connection with Sambuca. Its wood can contain cyanide.
  3. Grows abundantly in all parts of Great Britain, its close relatives are native in all the temperate regions of northern hemisphere and South America, has a fruit with a slightly misleading name and is one of the first things to colonise waste ground.
  4. Tree with fruits that can be used to flavour an alcoholic drink. Common all over the UK, including by the sea. Can cause a nasty infection if its thorns get into your skin.
  5. Used to make tool handles, the Fender Stratocaster guitar and the back of a Morris Minor Traveller.
  6. Deciduous shrub in the honeysuckle family. Native to North America. Poisonous to humans, but winter food source for pheasant and grouse.
  7. Flowering plant native to North America. Can be used to make rubber from the leaves and tea from the flowers. Its name is a Blondie song.
  8. Spiky but easily pulled up, grows on disturbed ground and chalk grassland. It is attractive to a wide range of insects.
  9. Poisonous to horses and livestock, especially when dried. Supports the caterpillars of the Cinnabar moth.
  10. Chalk grassland indicator species which can be eaten, as it names suggests.
  11. Grassland plant that attaches itself to the roots of grass and takes their nutrients for itself.
  12. Rare wild flower that is so named because it looks like an insect.
  13. Used to make hedging stakes and binders.
  14. Tree rarely seen in its mature form due to a disease in the second half of the 20th century.
  15. Woodland wildflower with a Christmas connection perhaps.


Christmas Quiz Answers - no cheating now!

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