Richard Spruce Collection

Welcome to Richard Spruce on the Web

The plants and objects collected by Richard Spruce in the Amazon and Andes from 1849 to 1864 form an important botanical, historical and ethnological resource. One of the great Victorian botanical explorers, Spruce spent approximately 15 years exploring South America, and was the one of the first Europeans to visit many of the places he collected.

The Richard Spruce project is a collaboration between the Natural History Museum, London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. We are working to locate and database the Spruce holdings in our respective herbaria in order to make information about them available to a wider audience of botanists, historians and others interested in the exploration of the Amazon and Andes.

The present phase of the project (2002 – 2005), is focusing on Spruce’s collections from Peru and Ecuador, and involves the work of 5 researchers from the Natural History Museum, RBG Kew and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru and volunteers at The NHM and RBG, Kew who kindly give their time and expertise for free.