Originally Posted by Maciamo
Well, I learn to distinguish leaves of at least the most common 20 or 30 varieties of trees in my country in both primary (elementary) and secondary (junior high) school. We had to make a herbarium by collecting the leaves by ourselves, dry them and flatten them (e.g. inside a phonebook), paste them on a blank sheet of paper, search in books or encyclopedia (or ask our parents) which tree they were, describe them, and we were rated on the quality and quantity of our researches. I do not know any (French-speaking) Belgian that hasn't done such a herbarium at school.