American Association of Amateur Arborists

ArborTags are inexpensive labels for tree identification. On one side appear the Latin and common names of the tree, while on the other appear various descriptions to aid identification: the leaf; the flower, fruit or nut; the bark and structure; and other cultural or anecdotal information about the tree or its species. The ArborTags are freely provided for anyone's use.

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Please read this Very Important Message about ArborTags.

The good news is that the ArborTags are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. This ensures that the pages are an exact copy of the source document which is important to preserve the dimensions of the tags.

The bad news is that you might not have the required Adobe Acrobat reader on your computer.

The good news is that the Adobe Acrobat reader is free. Just connect to the Adobe Web site, download the reader, and install it on your machine.

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Making an ArborTag.

Print the tag on your printer. 600 dots-per-inch printers work quite well. You will find four separate tags on the sheet. Cut out each of the four keeping the black borders intact. When each of these four is folded in half, you should have four tags measuring 3-3/16 by 2-1/8 inches approximately: roughly "business card" sized.

If you have no laminator yourself, photo shops, dime stores, and copy or office supply stores usually have a service/machine available for public use. Have the tags laminated in the heaviest plastic available, leaving the most room at the top of the tag. Punch two small holes at the top of the tag, each about 1/8 inch in from the edges, to attach a line to hang the tag.

Never staple or nail the tag itself to the tree: no one could see the other side. Instead use a heavy grade monofiliment fishing line to hang the tag from a lower branch. String degrades faster, and wire rusts. Be sure to hang it loosely or you will strangle the branch. If there is no low branch you could staple the fishing line to the trunk. Short staples attach well to the outer bark without damaging the inner bark.

For best results take a crew of amateur arborists along with you on your tagging expeditions. If you would like to contribute an ArborTag to these pages, send us mail.

A word about the copyright. The ArborTags are copyrighted to protect against someone else copyrighting them and thereby restricting their free distribution. You are entitled to make any number of copies of the ArborTags for the purposes of tagging trees.