Tree Bud Illustrated Posters From May Watts @ Morton Arboretum

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Earlier this year, in one of their ordinary monthly email broadcasts, the Morton Arboretum turned me on to something wild.  At least...wild to me.  Who am I?  A tree bud enthusiast.  Turns out, there are lots of us.  And some really special ones.   The newsletter referenced a former Arboretum employee with the title of 'naturalist' named May Theilgaard Watts.  And,  these incredible, illustrated vintage posters in the Arboretum collection that May T. Watts created.  First...a look at the posters below.  

All of these are sourced from ACORN - Sterling Morton's Library that includes online images.   Some May T Watts archives in ACORN can be found here.   Fascinating stuff in there.  I've only scratched the VERY thin surface. 

Have a look at these beauties.  Source...again...from ACORN.  The ACORN listing here states these were created in the 1940's.  


Hard to believe that I've never heard of Ms. Watts.  Can't be more interested in learning more about her and digging through Wikipedia and ACORN to learn from her.  Besides doing these posters, she's the reason why we've converted abandoned train lines into walking trails.  From Wikipedia:
She is credited with proposing in 1963 what ultimately developed as a national rails-to-trails program.

She graduated from the University of Chicago.  And then...a few years later, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.  That's the education cocktail that enabled these posters to be created.  Amazing. 

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