The Takhtajans had three children, Armen (1910–2009), Nellie (1914–1994) and Nora (1918–1965). In 1918 the family were forced to flee to northern Armenia because of the pogroms. Throughout his childhood, Armen showed a keen interest in natural history, travelling with his father. Armen attended school in Tbilisi in nearby Georgia, initially at Unified Labor School number 42 (former Mantashevskom commercial school). There he came under the influence of one of his teachers, Alexander Konstantinovich Makaev (Makashvili) (1896–1962), who had previously taught agriculture at Tbilisi State University, and had produced a dictionary of botanical names in Georgian, Russian and Latin. Makaev would take Armen on botanical excursions, teaching him to identify plants from Sosnowski and Grossheim's "Determinants of plant life in the vicinity of Tbilisi" (1920). In 1928 he completed secondary school and travelled to Leningrad. There he volunteered at the biology school at Leningrad University and attended lectures by Vladimir Leontyevich Komarov (1869–1945) on plant morphology. In 1929 he began his studies in biology at Yerevan State University in Yerevan, Armenia, which he completed in 1931. He then returned to Tbilisi, enrolling in the All-Union Institute of Subtropical Crops.