Events
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Fall Friday for Kids and Families: Botanical Potions
Friday, October 3
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11 am
Meet at the Pumpkin Cottage
Join us to make botanical potions! Learn about plants and their mythological histories then make your own botanical potion for the spooky season. Costumes are encouraged! Free with general admission.
Events
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Goodbye Pollinators, Hello Autumn!
Tuesday, September 30
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11 am
Whimsical Woods
It was an amazing summer celebrating our pollinator friends! As the weather turns, we’ll take this opportunity to say goodbye to our migrating butterflies and hummingbirds with songs, poems, and crafts — and make room for a new season. Costumes are encouraged!
The Importance of Pollinators www.morrisarboretum.org/blog/importance-pollinators
The Importance of Pollinators Over 80 percent of flowering plants and about a third of our food plants depend on bees for pollination. Image Aster in the Rose Garden. Photo by Lynn Weaver. At the height of the dinosaur age, roughly 130 million years ago, the first flowering plants appeared. Whereas pinecones are suited for wind pollination, flowers are designed specifically to attract and accommodate insects, birds and, rarely, mammals. Flowering plants arose as if from nowhere in the fossil record and rapidly increased in variety over the next 50 million years. Today, they account for about 94 percent of plants on earth—that is nearly 400,000 species! Compare that to the mere 20,000 ferns, clubmosses, cycads, and conifers alive today. What happened 130 million years ago to facilitate this remarkable explosion of flowers? In a letter to his friend Dr. Joseph Hooker, Charles Darwin wrote, famously, “The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery.” While we may never know for sure, the answer to this mystery is likely bees. About the same time flowering plants began their rapid evolution, the first bees appeared in the fossil record. Sweat bees, bumble bees, leaf-cutter bees, miner bees, honeybees—over 80 percent of modern flowering plants and about a third of our food plants depend on them for pollination. Bees, along with other pollinators such as moths, butterflies, and hummingbirds, are exponentially more efficient than wind at transporting pollen, and for several reasons are much more effective at driving evolution and variety, too. Although the honeybee is not native to Pennsylvania, the Keystone State is home to more than 430 species of native bees, along with 125 kinds of butterflies, 350 types of pollinating moths, and one species of hummingbird! So far, we have documented almost 200 native bees, and, of course, plenty of ruby-throated hummingbirds on our grounds here at the …
Events
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Premier Member Event: Stroll and Picnic with the Scarecrows
Tuesday, October 14
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4:30 pm
Join us for our next premier member-exclusive event! Bring the family or bring a friend and enjoy an early evening outside. Pack a snack or a meal and your favorite beverage for an al fresco garden experience. Stroll among the scarecrows in our enchanting gardens after hours—without the crowds! From colorful and creative to spectacularly spooky, Morris’s Annual Scarecrows are a fun display for everyone.
For help with ticket registration, please contact the membership office at members@morrisarboretum.org or 215.247.5777 ext. 205.
This program is invitation-only and registration is required. Rain or shine event. In the case of severe inclement weather, this event will be canceled.
Events
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Forest Ecology for Arborists
Monday, November 3
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12:30 – 4:30 pm
How can principles of forest ecology inform arboriculture? Join Ethan Tapper — a forester, digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World — for a workshop about forest ecology designed for arborists. We will walk in the woods and talk about wildlife habitat, natural history, forest ecology and forest stewardship, and discuss how to incorporate these principles into our work.
For more than a decade, Ethan Tapper has been recognized as a thought leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem stewardship, winning multiple regional and national awards for his work. His message of relationship, responsibility, and hope reaches millions of people each year through his writing, his social media channels (@HowToLoveAForest) with tens of thousands of followers, and the dozens of walks, talks, and keynotes that he delivers across North America each year.
This course has been submitted to carry 4 CEUs with ISA, LA CES, and the New Jersey Board of Tree Experts. This course is an approved elective in the Morris Arboretum & Gardens’ Certificate in Ecological Horticulture.
Fee: $105
Smith Walk's Tree Metamorphosis www.morrisarboretum.org/blog/smith-walks-tree-metamorphosis
Smith Walk's Tree Metamorphosis Morris Arboretum & Gardens' Urban Forestry Consultants, in conversation with the Office of the University Architect and Operations & Maintenance departments, determined it's time to remove six declining honeylocusts ( Gleditsia triacanthos ) along the oldest pedestrian walk on Penn's campus, and are developing a plan for the reuse of the wood and the planting of new trees in their place. One of the routine but very important decisions Penn’s landscape and urban forestry professionals must make every year is when to remove trees on campus and if those trees can be used in new or innovative ways. The campus is an official arboretum and the caretakers of it take numerous factors into account before making these decisions. This year, after much deliberation, the Morris Arboretum & Gardens' Urban Forestry Consultant team, in conversation with the Office of the University Architect and Operations & Maintenance departments in Facilities and Real Estate Services, determined it is time to schedule the removal of six of the remaining seven honeylocusts ( Gleditsia triacanthos ) on Smith Walk. They are also developing a plan for the reuse of the honeylocusts and the planting of new trees in their place. Image Figure 1: Fall colors of Smith Walk, Fall 2024, Chloe Cerwinka. Image "Smith Walk, stair from 33rd Street looking northwest toward Towne Building - University of Pennsylvania, Smith Walk, Bounded by Walnut, 33rd, 34th & Spruce Streets, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA Photos from Survey HABS PA-6179," George E. Thomas, published 1995, image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. A major consideration this year was the health of these trees and the lack of species diversity that contributed to their decline. These six honeylocusts have a documented history of myriad pests and diseases including honeylocust plant bugs ( Diaphnocoris chlorionis ), spider mites ( Platytetranychus multidigituli ), and …
Events
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Creating Biodiversity at Chanticleer
Thursday, October 23
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1 pm
Chanticleer
Thursday, October 23 • 1 – 3 pm
Members: $55 • Non-members: $60
Chanticleer is alive with more than just beautiful plantings—recent biodiversity surveys have identified over 1,000 species of birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and fish find habitat in the garden. For the past five years, the garden has conducted biodiversity surveys, with a special focus on native bees and moths, both important pollinators and critical elements in food webs for other wildlife.
In this special program, you’ll explore how a garden can nurture such rich biodiversity. Through both an indoor lecture and guided learning in the garden, discover how Chanticleer models ecologically sound practices by blending native and non-native plants across naturalistic and formal spaces. Learn about the garden’s biodiversity findings and how you can translate these principles into your own garden, no matter its size. A particular emphasis will be placed on the ecological value of leaving downed woody debris—like branches and logs—and creative ways to incorporate these elements into garden design without sacrificing beauty.
This program will be held at Chanticleer (786 Church Road, Wayne, PA 19087) and is a collaboration between Chanticleer and the Morris Arboretum & Gardens. This class has been submitted to carry 2 LA CES and ISA CEUs and is an approved elective in the Morris Arboretum & Gardens’ Certificate in Ecological Horticulture.