Richard Spruce

Who was Richard Spruce?

Richard Spruce was an English botanist. One of the great Victorian botanical explorers, Spruce spent 15 years exploring the Amazon from the Andes to its mouth, and was one of the first Europeans to visit many of the places where he collected specimens.

The plants and objects collected by Spruce from 1849 to 1864 form an important botanical, historical and ethnological resource, and have been indexed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, at Trinity College Dublin, and at the University of Manchester.

Spruce cultivated bitter bark quinine, making the drug widely available for the first time. The bark had historically been used by native South Americans as a cure for malaria.