The Plant Records Card Catalog is a record of The Morton Arboretum's living collections. Each set of plants that the Arboretum acquired has a correlating card or set of cards that briefly lists the life history information of the plants in that acquisition. It lists information such as where the plants originated, the number of plants acquired, where and when they were planted, and when a plant's life span ended. The digitized cards are organized by genus, with a total of 505 genera.
The cards include an accession number, typically found in the top-left corner of the card, and the plant's botanical name. Some cards feature a handwritten "S" in red pencil, which indicates that Floyd Swink verified the plant's location during his tenure as the Arboretum's taxonomist. The cards also often refer to the Arboretum's grid system, which identifies where the plant is located on the grounds with a letter-number system (example: T-52).
Funding for the digitization of the card catalog was provided by the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.
The Plant Records Card Catalog is 42,015 records that have been organized by genus. The digitized records for each genus have been consolidated into individual files, with a total of 505 files. The files, identified by the scientific genus name, are arranged alphabetically.
