Sunday 25th and it was time to ID some Conifers, lead by Clare and Mark Kitchen, quite a task as 36 keen
Gymnologists turned up. Is there such a word? Well, if you can have Bryologists then why not
Gymnologists?
We made a start with the Monkey Puzzle Tree, or Chilean Pine, which we all knew but could we key it
out in a proper scientific way. It proved somewhat of a challenge as some of the questions were a bit
obscure and some of the terminology had to be explained to some of the onlookers. Eventually we got
there albeit, perhaps with some help because we knew where we wanted to end up.
Subsequent trees were less of a problem as folks became more used to the questions being posed in the
key. Bit by bit we made our way round the Arboretum stopping at selected trees to work our way
through the key which by now was becoming more and more familiar.
Possibly 36 was a tad too many but it showed the interest in this difficult group of plants and maybe
future visits would be in order but with numbers restricted to no more than 20.