The Manhattan High Environmental Club went to the Kansas Forest Service office on Nov. 4 to learn how to identify trees and to play a scavenger hunt.

The property behind the office is where the activities took place, featuring a variety of different plants and trees.

“Some of [the trees] were planted for employees of the Kansas Forest Service,” junior President Allie Cloyd said. “And some of them, they’re growing there to try to figure out how they survive in Kansas.”

The club meeting started off with club officers taking a group of members to walk around and spot all the different ways you can identify a type of tree through their pine cones, acorns and leaves. 

“It was fun to teach people more about their environment,” junior Secretary Kate Anderson said. “It was a good experience.”

The participants also learned the science of why trees turn color in the fall and about the native and non-native plants in Kansas.

The club rounded off their meeting with a scavenger hunt involving what they just learned.

“They had to go out and find different leaves of kinds of trees and certain pine cones,” Cloyd said. “We then came back and ate cookies and looked at their scavenger hunt to determine our winners.”

The scavenger hunt winners ended up being the freshman duo of Hannah Momquist and Kate Murdock, with each earning a gift card.

“It was really fun,” freshman Kate Murdock said. “You felt so great that you were able to identify so many things after you learned about them.”

Although not as many participants were there as expected, the meeting was full of “fern” and a lot was learned.