Richard Spruce

Richard Spruce 1864
taken upon his return from Brazil

Richard Spruce(10 September 1817 – 28 December 1893) was an Englishbotanistspecializing inbryology.One of the greatVictorianbotanicalexplorers,Spruce spent 15 years exploring theAmazonfrom theAndesto its mouth, and was one of the very firstEuropeansto observe many of the places where he collectedspecimens.Spruce discovered and named a number of new plant species, and corresponded with some of the leading botanists of the nineteenth century.

Early life and career

Richard Spruce was born near Ganthorpe, a small village nearCastle HowardinYorkshire.After training under his father, a local schoolmaster, Spruce began a career as a tutor and then as a mathematics master atSt Peter's School in Yorkbetween 1839 and 1844.

Spruce started his botanical collecting in Yorkshire about 1833. In 1834, at age 16, he drew up a neatly written list of all of the plants he had found on trips around Ganthorpe, focusing onbryophytes.Arranged alphabetically and containing 403 species, the gathering and naming was Spruce's first major contribution to local botany. Three years later he had drawn up a "List of the Flora of the Malton District" containing 485 species offlowering plants.Several of Spruce's localities for the rarer plants are given inHenry Baines'sFlora of Yorkshire,published in 1840.

In 1842 Spruce visited Thomas Taylor, an Irish botanist who shared his interest in bryophytes. In 1844 his paper on "TheMusciandHepaticaeofTeesdale",the result of a three-week excursion, showed his skill at locating and identifying rare species. In Baines'sFlora of Yorkshireonly four mosses were recorded from Teesdale. Spruce increased the record to 167 mosses and 41 hepaticae, of which six mosses and oneliverwortwere new to Britain.

Memorial on the house in Coneysthorpe (North Yorkshire) where Spruce spent his last years

In April, 1845, he published in theLondon Journal of Botanydescriptions of 23 new British mosses, about half of which he had discovered himself. That year he also published his "List of the Musci and Hepaticae of Yorkshire" inThe Phytologist.The list included 48 mosses new to the Englishfloraand a further 33 new to Yorkshire.

Spruce came to the attention ofWilliam Jackson Hooker,the director of theRoyal Botanic Gardens at Kew,and was recommended for a collecting expedition to thePyrenees,which he undertook in 1845–1846. In 1846 he published "Notes on the Botany of the Pyrenees" and followed it with a more technical article, "The Musci and Hepaticae of the Pyrenees", published in 1849. Spruce issuedexsiccata-like series, among others the workMusci Pyrenaici, quos in Pyrenaeis centralibus occidentalibusque, nec non in agro Syrtico, A. D. 1845-6. Decerpsit Rich. Spruce(1847).

Expedition to South America

After Spruce proved his botanical skills in the Pyrenees, Hooker proposed a much more challenging expedition to Brazil. The prominent botanistGeorge Benthamwould act as broker and distributor of any specimens sent back to England. Despite his fragile health, Spruce accepted the proposal and spent a year at Kew becoming familiar with tropical botany.Spruce arrived atParáon board theBritanniaon 12 July 1849, and traveled up the Amazon River toSantarémwhere he first met two other young naturalists exploring the Amazon,Alfred Russel WallaceandHenry Walter Bates.Both subsequently well known for their work on natural selection, Wallace and Bates traveled along the tributaries of the Amazon, occasionally crossing paths with and sharing information with Spruce. Within the first two years of his expedition, Spruce had trekked along the full length of the riverTrombetasto British Guiana, crossing over the Rio Negro toManaos.

The plants and objects collected by Spruce from 1849 to 1864 (mostly in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru) form an important botanical, historical and ethnological resource, and have been indexed at theNew York Botanical Garden,at theRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew,London, atTrinity College Dublin,and at theUniversity of Manchester.Towards the end of his expedition through South America, Spruce studied indigenous cultivation ofcinchonain the Andes of Peru, then successfully exported seeds and young plants as requested by the government of India. The plant was cultivated to producequinine,a drug used to preventmalaria.

Later life

By the time of his return to England in 1864, his health was broken and his savings lost to fraud. He spent the last 27 years of his life atConeysthorpe,Yorkshire, near to where he was born. He received a small pension from the government and continued his botanical studies. He is buried in the churchyard ofTerrington.

Honours

He was honoured in the naming of several taxa of plants;

• SpruceaWilson & Hook.f. 1845(Dicranaceae), unaccepted,
• SpruceaBenth.1853 (Rubiaceae), a synonym ofSimira
• SprucellaSteph.1886 (liverworts,Lepidoziaceae)
• SprucellaPierre1890 (Sapotaceae), synonym ofMicropholis
• SpruceellaMüll.Hal.1900 (Rhachitheciaceae), synonym ofZanderiaGoffinet
• SpruceinaKuntze1903 (Lepidoziaceae), unaccepted,
• SprucinaNied.1908 (Malpighiaceae), synonym ofJubelina
• SpruceanthusVerd.in 1934 (Lejeuneaceae)
• SpruceanthusSleumer1936 (Flacourtiaceae), a synonym ofNeosprucea
• NeospruceaSleumer1938 (Salicaceae)
• SprucideaM.Cáceres, Aptroot & Lücking2017 (Lichen,Malmideaceae),
• Thaumatophyllum spruceanumSchott1859 (Aroid,Araceae), syn:Philodendron spruceanum

Selected publications

• Spruce, Richard (1841). "Three Days on the Yorkshire Moors."Phytologist(i): 101-104.
• Spruce, Richard (1842). "List of Mosses, etc., Collected in Wharfdale, Yorkshire."Phytologist(i): 197-198.
• Spruce, Richard (1842). "Mosses Near Castle Howard."Phytologist(i): 198.
• Spruce, Richard (1844). "The Musci and Hepaticae of Teesdale". Annals of Natural History. 13 (83): 84,
• Spruce, Richard (1845). "A List of Musci and Hepaticae of Yorkshire."Phytologist(ii): 147-157.
• Spruce, Richard (1845). "On Several Mosses New to British Flora."Hooker's London Journal of Botany(iv): 345-347, 535.
• Spruce, Richard (1846). "Notes on the Botany of the Pyrenees."Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh(iii): 103-216.
• Spruce, Richard (1850). "Mr Spruce's Voyage to Para."Hooker's Journal of Botany(li): 344-347.
• Spruce, Richard (1850). "Botanical Excursion on the Amazon."Hooker's Journal of Botany(li): 65-70.
• Spruce, Richard (1850). "Voyage Up the Amazon River."Hooker's Journal of Botany(li): 173-178.
• Spruce, Richard (1850). "Journal of an Excursion from Santarem, on the Amazon River, to Obidos and the Rio Trombetas."Hooker's Journal of Botany(li).
• Spruce, Richard (1908).Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon & AndesVol. I-II. Edited by Alfred Russel Wallace. London:Macmillan.https://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.17908.

External links

• "Spruce, Richard".Dictionary of National Biography.London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
• Richard Spruce Collection, Natural History Museum

Further reading

• Raby, P.Bright Paradise.Chatto & Windus, London. 1996.ISBN0-7011-4613-3