BOTANICAL RESTORATION: UM honors students, along with UNNICO workers, help to restore the John C. Gifford Arboretum on campus Saturday morning. Twenty-one percent of the arboretum’s collection was lost to Hurricane Katrina, and trees were also lost during Hurricane Wilma. To make matters worse, some trees were chopped by mistake by cleanup crews in the post-Wilma cleanup.
The arboretum, which was planted in 1947, contains a representative set of tropical plant families as well as a nearly complete set of tropical trees native to South Florida.