focus on... Peperomia Expedition Peru
The 2009 Expedition to Peru was the last one, after those to Mexico and Bolivia, to provide study material for the large research project on the phylogeny of this genus, currently carried out as a joint project of Dresden Technical University (Germany) and Ghent University (Belgium).

During two months researchers from both institutes explored the Andean mountains and their premontane slopes. A few localities in the western coastal region as well as in the eastern transition zone to the Amazonian lowlands were also searched. Starting from Lima, two teams went into the field. One team, exploring the northern part (red area), went all the way up to the departments of Cajamarca and Amazonas while the southern team (green area) went as far as Arequipa and Puno. In anticipation of the expedition a database of localities was compiled from 6250 Peruvian Peperomia specimens scattered over 36 herbaria. This is the most extended database of its kind and provides a pretty good idea of possible interesting areas that had to be explored. Some of you sent Peperomia pictures taken during your voyages to Peru together with precise locality data. Even before leaving Europe, the scientists were aware of several new species that they had to look for. The expedition started on January 11th and lasted until March 8th. The Museum of Natural History of the University of San Marcos (Lima) helped with logistics and the teams were glad to be accompanied by Peruvian botanists familiar with the localities on their wish list. The expedition was supported by the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), the German Science Foundation (DFG) and the Friends of the Botanical Garden of Ghent University.