Staff from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and colleagues from the North America-China Plant Exploration Consortium are embarking this fall on a plant collecting trip in the Appalachian Mountains region, the conservation partnership’s first expedition in North America in its 30-year history. Our intrepid explorers—Head of Horticulture Andrew Gapinski, Propagator Sean Halloran, and Living Collections Fellow Jared Rubinstein—are sharing their experiences in the field through a series of blogposts. This is their first transmission; see the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth parts.


For nearly 30 years, the North America-China Plant Exploration Consortium (NACPEC) has worked to foster partnerships between North American and Chinese public gardens and to sponsor plant exploration and collection expeditions. Since its inception, NACPEC has sponsored 18 expeditions with representatives from North American member institutions working with Chinese collaborators to collect over 1,500 plants from all over China. This year, for the first time, NACPEC and the Arnold Arboretum are sponsoring representatives from Chinese member institutions to collect plant material from the United States.

SABE-map-1980
A 1980 Sino-American Botanical Expedition map.

The last few decades of plant collection in East Asia have resulted in remarkable and equal partnerships between North American and East Asian institutions. The 1980 Sino-American Botanical Expedition represented the first North American plant collection expedition in China since the Chinese Revolution in 1947 and signaled a new sense of cooperation among botanists in both countries. Five American institutions, including the Arnold Arboretum, worked with the Institute of Botany, Beijing; the Jiangsu Institute of Botany, Nanjing; the Wuhan Institute of Botany; and the Kunming Institute of Botany to explore western Hubei Province. The expedition resulted in hundreds of collections, including the rare Zen magnolia (Magnolia zenii) and the seven-son flower (Heptacodium miconioides), and a new floral inventory of the area.

Lin-Lee-Bristol-Nanjing-Botanical-Garden
He Lin, Lawrence Lee, and Peter Bristol examine herbarium specimens at the Nanjing Botanical Garden in 1991, during the formation of NACPEC. Photo taken by Paul Meyer, published in Arnoldia, 2010.

The last few decades of plant collection in East Asia have resulted in remarkable and equal partnerships between North American and East Asian institutions. The 1980 Sino-American Botanical Expedition represented the first North American plant collection expedition in China since the Chinese Revolution in 1947 and signaled a new sense of cooperation among botanists in both countries. Five American institutions, including the Arnold Arboretum, worked with the Institute of Botany, Beijing; the Jiangsu Institute of Botany, Nanjing; the Wuhan Institute of Botany; and the Kunming Institute of Botany to explore western Hubei Province. The expedition resulted in hundreds of collections, including the rare Zen magnolia (Magnolia zenii) and the seven-son flower (Heptacodium miconioides), and a new floral inventory of the area.

Over the next several weeks, Andrew Gapinski (Head of Horticulture), Sean Halloran (Plant Propagator), and I (Jared Rubinstein, Living Collections Fellow) will post updates from our trip as we travel and collect in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. Our departure day is fast approaching, and we’re looking forward to hitting the road and seeing what plants we can find.

vibrunum-brachteatum-Sargent
An herbarium voucher of Viburnum bracteatum collected by C. S. Sargent in 1899 from northern Georgia. We hope to collect seeds from a different population of this rare species in central Tennessee.

We are proud to represent the Arnold Arboretum’s commitment to recognizing the vitality of equal partnerships in international plant collection. We hope this expedition will help fulfill NACPEC’s vision of increasing our ability to study and conserve plants and enriching the vital relationships between its partner institutions.


Read the next story in this series of blog posts.