In addition, there was free ice cream from Edy’s, lemonade, wine tasting from Bonterra Vineyards, a sampling of the summer’s Theatre-Hikes with costumed actors, and behind-the-scenes tours with one-of-a-kind artifacts on display.

Arboretum guides took guests on tours of the Arboretum herbarium, with 176,000 dried plant specimens, including a wild hybrid buckeye from a seed that George Washington collected in 1784; a fern that Clarence Hemingway collected in 1891 just eight years before his famous child, Ernest, was born; and three willow specimens from 1824 the oldest in our herbarium. Other guides led guests to the state-of-the-art glass greenhouses.

Four special tram tours took visitors on hour-long trips to the China Collection, Schulenberg Prairie, wetlands and the tree breeding nursery. Experts in the Collections Department explained the importance of tree breeding, living collections, and natural areas management work at the Arboretum.

In addition, guests were able to chat with our Community Trees Advocate about how the Arboretum helps homeowners and municipalities on various tree issues. Visitors were also able to speak with experts from our Plant Clinic who were on hand to help diagnose tree or shrub problems and to recommend solutions. Members of our horticulture staff presented several very popular  demonstrations on container gardening.

We’d love to hear about your experiences at this year’s Member Open House. Post your comments now!

The following is excerpted from the article “Morton Arboretum scientists unearth links of plant life,” by Joan Broz, published in the Daily Herald in 2008.

Discovery is part of most trips to The Morton Arboretum, but nowhere is it more evident than on a visit to meet the scientists who work there. Andrew Hipp always knew he wanted to work outside.

“I was an English major but took classes in botany to land a job outside,” he said. Working as a ranger at an arboretum opened his eyes to the variations in plants even within a species. He returned to academia to concentrate on plant evolution and ecology.

Similar to a human family where parents may have children with different hair and eye color, there is a lot of genetic variability within species having the same parentage. Hipp extracts a plant’s DNA to study its genetics. Analysis of those variations provides Hipp with insight into the diversity and relatedness of natural populations.

“When restoring a prairie, wetland, woodland or savanna, what species to plant is only one layer of the question,” Hipp said. Consideration given to the genetics of the individual plants is important to the natural resources’ overall health.

As the Herbarium curator, Hipp is particular about the plant specimens that go into the Arboretum’s Herbarium. He calls the Chicago region the best location to study plants because it’s where the north woods, deciduous forest and prairie all collide. The Arboretum’s Herbarium, similar to a rare books room in a library, documents the diversity of plants throughout the world.

____________________________________________ Learn more about Andrew, his work, his special research interests and a listing of his many professional publications – including children’s books! You are also invited to visit Andrew’s Lab! You may also be interested in learning more about sedges for your garden. Dr. Hipp’s recently published book Field Guide to Wisconsin Sedges was published earlier this year and is a definitive resources in the field. “With this book, a naturalist in the Chicago area can identify 95 percent or more of the common Carex sedges they run across,” according to Hipp. That’s important because sedges are arguably the most ecologically important group of plants in wetlands across North America, Hipp says.