Nature Riddles

Ten nature riddles at a time, what-am-I style: mountains, volcanoes, caves, forests, shores and sky.

Nature Riddles

Show all 81
  1. One of us grows down from the cave ceiling, and one of us grows up from the floor. When we finally meet, we become one thing. What do we become?
  2. I am one full trip of the Earth around the Sun. Spring, summer, fall and winter all fit inside me. What am I?
  3. I am a wide land where grass, not trees, is the main thing growing. Herds of bison once roamed across me. What am I?
  4. I was a lake once. The water dried up into the desert air and left me behind: flat, wide and shining white under the sun. What am I?
  5. Water made me, and it used no tools. Rain seeped into the limestone and dissolved it, grain by grain, until there was a room where there had been rock. What am I?
  6. I am a wind that turns around with the season, and I bring the rains with me. Most people use my name for the rainy part of the year. What am I?
  7. I am the last step of a long climb. Every way you look from me is down, so you take a picture and turn around. What am I?
  8. I rise from an erupting volcano in a dark cloud and settle over everything like gray snow. I am not burnt wood: I am tiny bits of rock and glass. What am I?
  9. People long ago painted pictures on my walls and ceilings, deep underground where no sun could fade them. What am I?
  10. The sea wore a hole straight through a rocky point and left me standing: a bridge of stone that nobody built. What am I?

Next step Volcano trivia questionsWeather trivia questions

How it works

These nature riddles are about the land itself. Each one describes a mountain, a cave, a marsh, a tide or a cloud and asks: what am I? The line under the answer gives the fact behind it.

Read the full guide

Mountain riddles, volcano riddles and three more sets

Mountains climbs from the foothills to the summit, past the tree line and the snow line. Volcanoes, caves and canyons goes underground too: a geyser, a stalactite, a sinkhole. Forests and fields, Deserts, islands and shores and Sky and seasons run from a swamp to a solstice.

Simple nature riddles for younger kids

Easy answers are places a child can name: a valley, a cliff, a meadow, a bay. Medium and Hard ask for the words of an earth science unit, such as stalagmite, peninsula or equinox.

  • On a hike, read from the set that matches where you are walking.
  • After each answer, ask whether anyone at the table has stood on one, in one or under one.

Questions and answers

What is a riddle with cave as the answer?

Three here are answered by a cave. One of them: People long ago painted pictures on my walls and ceilings, deep underground where no sun could fade them. What am I? The other two turn on its darkness and on how water makes a cave.

What is an easy mountain riddle?

Maps print a number beside my name: how high my top stands above the level of the sea. The bigger the number, the longer the climb. What am I? A mountain.

What is a good volcano riddle?

While I am under the ground I have one name. The moment I reach the surface, people call me lava. What is my underground name? Magma. The same set has the crater, ash, pumice and obsidian.

What is a what am I riddle about nature?

A riddle told in the voice of a place or a thing outdoors, with the name left for you to guess. I am a forest with wet feet: my trees stand in water. What am I? A swamp.

More tools

Browse Word Games

All 81 riddles

Mountains 16

  • I am a fence with no posts, high on a mountainside. Below me the forest grows, and above me it is too cold and harsh for any tree to stand. What am I? Answer: The tree line. The tree line is the edge beyond which trees cannot grow.
  • I am a line nobody painted, high on a mountain. Above me the snow lies all year, and below me it melts every summer. What am I? Answer: The snow line. The permanent snow line is the level above which snow stays all year.
  • I am a long row of mountains standing side by side, joined by high ground like a wall across the map. What am I? Answer: A mountain range. A range is a line of mountains connected by high ground.
  • I am a sharp bend that turns the trail back the way it came, a little higher up. A whole string of me makes a steep slope gentle enough to walk. What am I? Answer: A switchback. Switchbacks zigzag up a slope so the path is less steep.
  • I am a slope of loose, broken rock piled at the bottom of a cliff. Every piece of me fell from the wall above. What am I? Answer: Scree. Scree is the broken rock that collects at the base of a cliff from rockfall.
  • I am a small pile of stones stacked by people who passed this way. Where the trail is hard to see, I show walkers where it goes. What am I? Answer: A cairn. A cairn is a pile of stones raised by people, often as a marker.
  • I am a snowslide's rougher cousin. After long rain, a whole hillside of rock and wet earth lets go, and I am the name for what comes down. What am I? Answer: A landslide. A landslide is rock, earth or mud sliding down a slope.
  • I am a wall that nobody built. My rock face drops almost straight down, so admire the view and keep back from my edge. What am I? Answer: A cliff. A cliff is a face of rock that is vertical or nearly so.
  • I am as high as a mountain and as flat as a table. Cliffs or steep slopes drop away from at least one of my sides. What am I? Answer: A plateau. A plateau is high, flat land raised sharply above the land around it.
  • I am tall enough to stop the clouds. The wet wind climbs one of my sides and rains itself out, and the land behind me stays dry. What am I? Answer: A mountain. The dry land on the far side of a mountain is called its rain shadow.
  • I am the last step of a long climb. Every way you look from me is down, so you take a picture and turn around. What am I? Answer: The summit. The summit is the highest point of a mountain.
  • I am the low gap between two peaks. For travelers I am the way through the mountains without going over the top. What am I? Answer: A mountain pass. A pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge.
  • I am the low ground between two high places. A river usually runs along my floor, and the road follows the river. What am I? Answer: A valley. A valley is a long low area between hills or mountains, often with a river in it.
  • I began as snow that fell faster than it could melt, year after year, until its own weight pressed it into ice. Deep inside, I look blue. What am I? Answer: A glacier. A glacier forms where more snow piles up than melts away, and its packed ice appears blue.
  • Maps print a number beside my name: how high my top stands above the level of the sea. The bigger the number, the longer the climb. What am I? Answer: A mountain. The height of a mountain is measured from sea level to its top.
  • We are the low hills at the base of the mountains. Walk across us and the real climb has not even started. What are we? Answer: Foothills. Foothills are the gradual rise at the base of a mountain range.

Volcanoes, caves and canyons 19

  • From my rim, the river that carved me looks like a thread. It cut down through the rock one layer at a time and left a cliff on each side. What am I? Answer: A canyon. A canyon is a deep cut between cliffs, worn through layers of rock by a river.
  • I am a pool that nobody heats and nobody fills. My water comes up warm from deep in the ground. What am I? Answer: A hot spring. A hot spring is groundwater heated inside the Earth that comes to the surface.
  • I am a rock that floats. A volcano filled me with so many tiny bubbles that I can bob on water. What am I? Answer: Pumice. Pumice is volcanic rock full of holes, and it floats on water.
  • I am a room in the rock with no light switch. Step inside, and the daylight shrinks to a small bright shape behind you. What am I? Answer: A cave. A cave is a natural hollow under the ground.
  • I am a spring with a temper. I rest for a while, then throw hot water and steam high into the air, then rest again. What am I? Answer: A geyser. A geyser is a spring that shoots out water and steam from time to time.
  • I am an island that no river and no wave built. Eruptions on the sea floor piled me up until my top stood above the water. What kind of island am I? Answer: A volcanic island. A volcanic island is an island made by a volcano.
  • I am glass that no person made: black, smooth and shiny. I form when lava cools too fast to grow crystals. What am I? Answer: Obsidian. Obsidian is natural volcanic glass, made when lava cools quickly.
  • I am melted rock that has come out of a volcano and onto the ground. I glow as I flow, and when I cool I am solid stone. What am I? Answer: Lava. Lava is molten rock that has reached the surface.
  • I am the round hollow at the top of a volcano, shaped like a bowl. Gas and lava leave through the vent in my floor. What am I? Answer: A crater. A volcanic crater is a bowl-shaped hollow around a vent.
  • I hang from the ceiling of a cave like a stone icicle, and my name comes from a Greek word for dripping. What am I? Answer: A stalactite. Stalactites hang from the ceiling; stalagmites stand on the floor.
  • I rise from an erupting volcano in a dark cloud and settle over everything like gray snow. I am not burnt wood: I am tiny bits of rock and glass. What am I? Answer: Volcanic ash. Volcanic ash is fragments of rock, mineral crystals and volcanic glass.
  • I rise from the floor of a cave, built from whatever the drips from the ceiling leave behind. What am I? Answer: A stalagmite. A stalagmite grows upward from the cave floor under a drip.
  • Most of my kind stand in a great belt around one ocean, the Pacific, and the belt has a fiery name. What am I? Answer: A volcano. The Ring of Fire surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean and holds about two-thirds of the world's volcanoes.
  • One day the ground simply drops, and I am the hole that is left. Under me, water had been hollowing out the rock for a long time. What am I? Answer: A sinkhole. A sinkhole is a hole made when the surface layer collapses.
  • One of us grows down from the cave ceiling, and one of us grows up from the floor. When we finally meet, we become one thing. What do we become? Answer: A column. A stalactite and a stalagmite that join form a column.
  • People long ago painted pictures on my walls and ceilings, deep underground where no sun could fade them. What am I? Answer: A cave. Cave paintings are prehistoric art found on the walls and ceilings of caves.
  • Scientists sort my kind into three moods: active, dormant and extinct. An active one may erupt again, and an extinct one never will. What am I? Answer: A volcano. Volcanoes are called active, dormant or extinct by how likely they are to erupt.
  • Water made me, and it used no tools. Rain seeped into the limestone and dissolved it, grain by grain, until there was a room where there had been rock. What am I? Answer: A cave. Most caves form when water dissolves a rock such as limestone.
  • While I am under the ground I have one name. The moment I reach the surface, people call me lava. What is my underground name? Answer: Magma. Molten rock is magma below the surface and lava once it comes out.

Forests and fields 16

  • I am a circle of mushrooms in the grass. I grow on my own, and my name says that somebody small and magical danced here. What am I? Answer: A fairy ring. A fairy ring is a ring of mushrooms that forms naturally.
  • I am a cold land where the growing season is too short and the air too frigid for trees. Low shrubs, grasses, mosses and lichens cover me. What am I? Answer: The tundra. On the tundra, cold and short summers keep trees from growing.
  • I am a crowd that never moves. Thousands of us stand close together, and you could walk among our trunks all day. What am I? Answer: A forest. A forest is a dense community of trees.
  • I am a forest with wet feet: my trees stand in water. What am I? Answer: A swamp. A swamp is a forested wetland.
  • I am a mix of minerals, water, air, living things and what is left of dead ones. Every root in the forest is holding on to me. What am I? Answer: Soil. Soil is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water and living things.
  • I am a plant with no flowers and no seeds. On many of my kind, a new leaf starts out coiled like the top of a violin and unrolls as it grows. What am I? Answer: A fern. Ferns have neither seeds nor flowers, and many unroll from coiled fiddleheads.
  • I am a wetland where dead moss piles up, year after year, into a thick brown layer called peat. What am I? Answer: A bog. A bog is a wetland that builds up peat from dead plants, often mosses.
  • I am a wetland with reeds and grasses where a swamp would have trees. You often find me at the edge of a lake or a stream. What am I? Answer: A marsh. A marsh is a wetland of soft-stemmed plants, not woody ones.
  • I am a wide land where grass, not trees, is the main thing growing. Herds of bison once roamed across me. What am I? Answer: A prairie. A prairie is grassland, and bison were among the animals that grazed it.
  • I am an open field of grasses and flowers, with hardly a tree or a bush. Farmers sometimes cut me for hay. What am I? Answer: A meadow. A meadow is open land covered with grasses and other plants that are not woody.
  • I am an open space in the middle of the woods, where the trees stand back and the sun reaches the grass. What am I? Answer: A clearing. A clearing, or glade, is an open area within a forest.
  • I am only the fruit of something bigger. The rest of it is a mass of fine threads, hidden in the soil or the wood I grow from. What am I? Answer: A mushroom. A mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus, and it grows from a mass of threads called the mycelium.
  • I am part grassland and part woodland. My trees stand so far apart that their tops never close into a roof, and grass grows under all of them. What am I? Answer: A savanna. In a savanna the trees are widely spaced, so light reaches an unbroken layer of grass.
  • I am the forest's carpet: fallen leaves, twigs, bark and needles. Give me time, and I rot down and feed the soil under me. What am I? Answer: Leaf litter. Leaf litter is dead plant material on the ground, and it releases nutrients into the soil as it breaks down.
  • I am the roof of the forest, made of the tops of the tallest trees. Vines, air plants and tree-dwelling animals live up in me. What am I? Answer: The canopy. The canopy is the upper layer of a forest, formed by the crowns of the trees.
  • Nobody planted me and nobody waters me. I bloom anyway, at the side of the road or in the middle of a field. What am I? Answer: A wildflower. A wildflower grows in the wild without being sown or planted on purpose.

Deserts, islands and shores 16

  • A river drops its mud and sand where it meets the sea, and builds me out of them. I am named for a Greek letter that is shaped like a triangle. What am I? Answer: A river delta. A delta is land built from a river's sediment, named for the triangular Greek letter delta.
  • I am a family of islands, close together in one stretch of sea like beads spilled from a string. What am I? Answer: An archipelago. An archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands.
  • I am a hill with a flat top and steep sides, standing alone above the plain. My name is the Spanish word for table. What am I? Answer: A mesa. A mesa is a flat-topped hill with steep sides, and mesa means table in Spanish.
  • I am a narrow strip of land with water on both sides, and I join two larger lands that would otherwise be apart. My name comes from a Greek word for neck. What am I? Answer: An isthmus. An isthmus is a narrow piece of land that connects two larger areas across water.
  • I am a place where the coast curves inward and the sea follows it, like a bite taken out of the land. What am I? Answer: A bay. A bay is water set back into the coast and open to a larger body of water.
  • I am a streambed with no stream. Most of the year I am dry sand and stones, and after a desert thunderstorm I can fill in a rush. What am I? Answer: An arroyo, or dry wash. An arroyo is a dry channel that flows after rain, and flash floods are common in one.
  • I am a wall under warm, shallow sea. The big waves spend their strength on me, and the shore behind me is spared. What am I? Answer: A coral reef. Coral reefs protect shorelines by absorbing the energy of the waves.
  • I am an island shaped like a ring. My rim is coral, and inside me lies a quiet lagoon. What am I? Answer: An atoll. An atoll is a ring-shaped island whose coral rim encircles a lagoon.
  • I am shallow, quiet water with a reef or a strip of sand between me and the open sea. What am I? Answer: A lagoon. A lagoon is shallow water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform such as a reef.
  • I am the line where the land ends and the sea begins. Every map draws me, and every wave moves me a little. What am I? Answer: The coast, or shoreline. The coast is the boundary between the land and the ocean.
  • I can be hot sand or frozen ground. What makes me what I am is not heat: it is that almost no rain or snow ever falls on me. What am I? Answer: A desert. A desert is a place with very little precipitation, and the polar regions have cold deserts.
  • I was a lake once. The water dried up into the desert air and left me behind: flat, wide and shining white under the sun. What am I? Answer: A salt flat. A salt flat forms when a pool of water evaporates and leaves its salt.
  • The Moon does most of the pulling, and the Sun helps. Because of them I lift the whole edge of the sea and let it down again. What am I? Answer: The tide. Tides are the rise and fall of the sea caused mainly by the pull of the Moon and the Sun.
  • My name comes from two Latin words that mean "almost" and "island". The sea is on most of my sides, and one side still holds on to the mainland. What am I? Answer: A peninsula. Peninsula comes from the Latin paene, almost, and insula, island.
  • The sea wore a hole straight through a rocky point and left me standing: a bridge of stone that nobody built. What am I? Answer: A natural arch. Natural arches often form where the sea erodes coastal cliffs.
  • When the sea goes out, it leaves me behind among the rocks: a small pool of salt water, waiting for the sea to come back. What am I? Answer: A tide pool. A tide pool is seawater trapped among the rocks when the tide goes out.

Sky and seasons 14

  • Everybody talks about me, and nobody can change me. I am what the air is doing right now, right here: hot or cold, wet or dry, cloudy or clear. What am I? Answer: The weather. Weather is the state of the air at one place and time.
  • I am a blanket with no cloth in me. I am the layer of air wrapped around the whole Earth, and gravity keeps me from drifting away. What am I? Answer: The atmosphere. The atmosphere is the layer of gases around the Earth, held there by gravity.
  • I am a stretch of time that is drier than normal, and I may last for months or years. Fields and rivers show that I am here. What am I? Answer: A drought. A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.
  • I am a wind that turns around with the season, and I bring the rains with me. Most people use my name for the rainy part of the year. What am I? Answer: A monsoon. A monsoon is a seasonal reversing wind, and the word is mostly used for its rainy phase.
  • I am curtains of green, red and purple light in the night sky near the poles. Particles from the Sun make me when they hit the air high above. What am I? Answer: An aurora. In the Arctic the aurora is called the northern lights.
  • I am ground that stays frozen all year long, for two years or more, even when the surface above me thaws in summer. What am I? Answer: Permafrost. Permafrost is soil that stays below freezing for two years or more.
  • I am one full trip of the Earth around the Sun. Spring, summer, fall and winter all fit inside me. What am I? Answer: A year. A year is the time the Earth takes to orbit the Sun.
  • I am the cloud that children draw: flat on the bottom and piled up high on top. My Latin name means heap. What kind of cloud am I? Answer: A cumulus cloud. Cumulus is Latin for heap or pile.
  • I am the giant among clouds, and I bring the thunder and the lightning. When I do, people call me a thunderhead. What is my proper name? Answer: Cumulonimbus. A cumulonimbus cloud that causes a thunderstorm is called a thunderhead.
  • I am the long trip that some birds make twice a year, between the place where they nest and the place where they spend the winter. What am I? Answer: Migration. Bird migration is a seasonal journey between breeding and wintering grounds.
  • I am the reason for the seasons. Because of me, the Sun climbs higher in the sky in summer than in winter. I am the lean of the Earth. What am I called? Answer: The tilt of the Earth's axis. It is the Earth's axial tilt that puts the Sun higher in the sky in the summer months.
  • I am the way some animals get through the winter: body cold, breathing slow, heart slow, hardly moving until spring. What am I? Answer: Hibernation. In hibernation an animal's body temperature, breathing and heart rate all drop.
  • I come twice a year, in June and in December. One of me is the day with the most daylight, and the other is the day with the least. What am I? Answer: A solstice. The longest and shortest days of the year are the summer and winter solstices.
  • I come twice a year, in March and in September. On my day the Sun is straight above the equator and rises almost exactly in the east. What am I? Answer: An equinox. At an equinox the Sun is directly above the equator.