July 17, 2025
In May 2025, a team from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University completed a 16-day visit to China, deepening international partnerships in botanical research and conservation. Supported by the Harvard China Fund, the Arboretum hosted a conference and field excursion for the North American China Plant Exploration Consortium (NACPEC). This trip served as a key milestone in uniting global efforts to address biodiversity challenges through collaboration.
The Arnold Arboretum has been working together with Chinese botanists ever since 1907, when the British plant collector and explorer Ernest Henry (E.H.) Wilson was hired to launch an expedition to gather botanical specimens in China. Over the next three years, Wilson traveled hundreds of miles gathering plants and seeds in Hubei and Sichuan Provinces, with the help of a team of Chinese collectors. In the coming decades, many others from the Arnold Arboretum would follow, exploring other temperate parts of China, including the botanist and explorer Joseph Rock. Today, the arboretum’s second largest collection, other than North American trees, comes from China. Researchers come from all over the world to study Chinese trees.
The 2025 expedition brought together staff members from five North American botanical gardens and prominent Chinese institutions including Zhejiang University, Beijing’s National Botanic Garden, Kunming Institute of Botany, and Shanghai Chenshan Botanic Garden. The conference featured a mix of scholarly exchange and fieldwork, offering participants a platform to share ongoing research, inspire young scientists, explore new joint initiatives, and strengthen institutional ties across borders.
The Harvard Center Shanghai hosted a celebratory gathering on May 9, reuniting the Arboretum team with collaborators and longtime supporters. The event included a presentation session with colleagues from Zhejiang University and the National Botanical Gardens, and welcomed donors to the China Conservation Collaboration Initiative. Participants also paid homage to the Arboretum’s first Shanghai event held at the Center in 2015—commemorated through photos by E.H. Willson that still adorn the Center’s halls.
“This trip will be remembered as a catalyzing moment for the group,” Dr. Miles Schwartz Sax, Assistant Curator of Living Collections, says, “where consortium members found renewed commitment to working together and strengthened bonds between Chinese and North American institutions.”
As NACPEC undertakes strategic planning for the next five to ten years, this visit marks a renewed momentum for future projects in plant exploration, seed banking, and public education. The Harvard China Fund remains deeply committed to supporting advancing scholastic exchange across North America and China by continuing to invest in such activities.
