FT14 - The Morton Arboretum

Day: Sunday 7/8
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Trip Leader: Kris Bachtell Director of Collections and Grounds
Email Address: kbachtel@mortonarb.org

Trip Limit: 40

Visit the Morton Arboretum's 1,700 acres of beautiful gardens, world-renowned plant collections, and rare and unique natural areas in an open-air tram. The Morton Arboretum includes nearly 4,000 taxa of woody plants, as well as 700 acres of natural areas comprising forest, savanna, prairie and wetlands, that serve as a living laboratory for restoration and management. The Sterling Morton Library holds over 25,000 volumes (including periodicals back to 1787), over 12,000 natural history artworks, nearly 5,000 rare natural history & landscape architecture books, nursery catalogs, over 1,500 landscape drawings by prairie school designers (Jensen, Johnson, Simonds), one of the best Midwestern botanical-horticultural libraries. Stops along the tour will include plant collections from more than 60 countries of north temperate regions of the world. The plants are labeled and grouped into collection themes, which helps in their interpretation and evaluation for their ability to survive the challenging climate of northern Illinois. Other stops will include the Schulenberg Prairie, one of the oldest planted prairies in Illinois, and a reconstruction of a dolomite prairie. The tour will also include the Morton Arboretum Herbarium that houses over 156,000 vascular plant specimens, including the most complete collection of dried plants documenting the rich and diverse flora of the Chicago region. Time will also be available to walk through other attractions such as the Children's Garden, Maze Garden, and the Sterling Morton Library.This trip will include transportation throughout the arboretum in an open-air tram.