Garden
The Morton Arboretum
Sprawling tree museum of woodland trails, prairie, and a grafted lineage of the region's oldest oaks.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to The Morton Arboretum outside Chicago follows a beloved bur oak at Lincoln Park Zoo that visitors believed had witnessed the Civil War and the Chicago Fire, and what the Arboretum's own scientists found when they examined its rings. It traces the tree's decline by 2023 and the notes visitors left it before it came down, describing the goodbye as like sitting with someone in hospice. The Arboretum's founder built the whole institution around a two-word family motto.
This audio guide was created using AI.