Through a Magnifying Glass (3.24609)
Date: 1944Creator: Watts, May Theilgaard
Type: Drawing
Description:Illustrations of lichens, flowers, buds, leaves, twigs, and seeds of various plants, created to accompany "Through A Magnifying Glass" article featured in Morton Arboretum Bulletin of Popular Information. Includes descriptive text next to each plant image.
Plants depicted in three sections, from left to right, top to bottom:
Section 1: There are lichens in the spruce plot,
- Pixie cups -- Cladonia chlorophaea
- British soldiers -- Cladonia cristatella
- Awl lichen -- Cladonia coniocraea
- Vernal Witch hazel -- Hamamelis vernalis
- A magnolia bud wears deep velvet
- The persistent leaves of bayberry are copper and rose underneath, set with amber globules
- Butternut buds wear camels' faces
- Birch seeds and the scales of their cones play several variations on the same theme, including European white, gray, cherry, and river
- Queen Anne's lace has design in its "bird-nest" seed heads
- Spore capsules of mosses show many patterns. This one is Funaria hygrometrica, with a seta that twists and untwists with changing humidity
- A buckeye bud may reveal a flower cluster and several leaves
Extent: 1 sheet
From a Summer Meadow (3.24613)
Date: 1945Creator: Watts, May Theilgaard
Type: Drawing
Description:Illustrations of various meadow leaves, seeds, and flowers with descriptive text next to each image, created to accompany "Let's Look At A Meadow" article featured in Morton Arboretum Bulletin of Popular Information.
Header: From A Summer Meadow
Illustrations are divided into three sections, from top to bottom:
Section 1 - LEAVES with protection (depicted from left to right)
- from a too thristy sun
- Queen Anne's lace - reduced surface
- Prickly lettuce - compass habit
- Milkweed - milky juice
- Mullein (overlapped in next section) - felty covering
- from hungry cattle
- Mullein (overlapped in previous section) - felty covering
- Yarrow - bitter taste
- Thistle - spines
- by air
- Milkweed
- Fleabane
- Goatsbeard
- Thistle
- Dandelion
- by fur
- Barbs of grasses (enlarged)
- Spanish needle
- Cocklebur
- Burdock
- Aster
- Fleabane
- Brown-eyed susan
- Chicory
- Sneezeweed
Extent: 1 sheet