At Cogitania’s Saturday Botany workshop fourth graders met at the Arnold Arboretum for a beautiful tour of the gardens. We walked the Conifer trail and compared the cone, bark, and needle textures, colors, and size of several conifer trees. The students also learned the family, genus and species scientific names and common names of these conifers.

We finished our walk at the visitor center where we learned about drying and preserving plants. We observed several examples of dried plants that are part of the Herbarium collection of 130,000 specimens.