Dear all,

From our flight out of Santiago and before falling asleep, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of you for making our expedition such a wonderful success. Admittedly, there were moments before our trip where I thought that organizing an expedition like this borders on madness, but I am also convinced it is the right kind of madness. We have been able to bring together horticulturists, botanists and educators from five different gardens in the field, and our experiences with Chiles stunning flora and landscapes as well as with each other add up to so much more than we would have managed with only a few of us. The approximately 280 accessions that we collected have been divided between us in such a way that we can optimise their chances of survival in our different gardens, which all have different climates along a gradient from Concepcion to Tromsø. 

With approximately 380 000 plant species and 3000 botanical gardens in the world, building up a resilient and genetically diverse meta-collection that includes most of these species across our institutions should be entirely possible. Perhaps organizing joint expeditions like ours that allow for firsthand experience of the plants in nature, dividing collections in an optimal way and a lot of knowledge exchange is the way to do it. 

None of this would have been possible without all of you. First and foremost, I would like to thank Cristian and your team, Camila, Soledad, Paulina and of course Javier for welcoming us all to Chile. Your work on Campus Naturaleza and exploring its potential for ex-situ conservation and human-nature interactions is truly inspiring. Javier, you have been an incredible help in the field, and I hope that you have enjoyed the trip as much as we did. Stina and Åsa thank you for your ambitious approach to plant collecting, to working with Sophora toromiro and to communicating about it all and thank you as well for midnight plant pressing and your amazing sense of humour. We are privileged to have you guys in Gothenburg as our sister garden.  Matthew and Luigi, thank you for joining us in the last minute, for being such valuable sparring partners and Matthew for letting us tag along in your life as an expedition botanist for these two weeks. Kristian, thank you for joining too and for being such an enthusiastic plant-nerd (even though you were wrong about that Misodendrum, of course ;))

Øystein, you have been key to the success of this trip. From the early planning stages in July, to all the bookings we made, to producing the joint expedition stamp on the laser engraver just before departure, to herding your sleep-deprived colleagues into taxis to the airport with the right amount of cash at 4 in the morning, and to having memorised most of the species we were going to see before each day in the field. Your capability to always think a few steps ahead has made the organisation of the trip a breeze in addition to a lot of fun. All the rest of the Oslo team, thank you for being as much in awe about Chile as I am, for all the driving, collecting, seed cleaning, the long days in the field and also for all the support you have been giving each other. You are a wonderful crowd to work with. 

Last but not least, an enormous thank you to our Friends of the Garden Society for your financial support. All the hours that you spent on enthusiastically preparing the annual plant sale and on guiding hundreds of groups in our Botanical Garden do not only have a positive impact there and then. They also make it possible for us to have one of Europe’s most ambitious expedition programs and to develop a unique living plant collection. We cannot wait to show you all the plants and places that we have seen and look forward to the spring in Oslo, which should be just around the corner now. I have attached some pictures (taken by various people) here already, but there are many more to come. 

All the best for now, looking forward to seeing you all soon, and to continuing to collaborate with all of you,

Anneleen

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Anneleen Kool 
Director, University of Oslo Botanical Garden