Charles James Sprague (January 16, 1823, Boston – August 5, 1903,

Hingham, Massachusetts Hingham ( ) is a town in metropolitan Greater Boston on the South Shore (Massachusetts), South Shore of the U.S. state of Massachusetts in northern Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Plymouth County. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, t ...

) was a bank official, author, poet, musician, and botanist, specializing in

lichenology Lichenology is the branch of mycology that studies the lichens, symbiotic organisms made up of an intimate symbiotic association of a microscopic alga (or a cyanobacterium) with a filamentous fungus. Study of lichens draws knowledge from several ...

. Charles James Sprague, whose father was the poet Charles Sprague (1791–1875), followed his father into the banking business. For many years Charles J. Sprague contributed poems and articles to periodicals. In the 1850s and 1860s he was a curator in botany for the

Boston Society of Natural History The Boston Society of Natural History (1830–1948) in Boston, Massachusetts, was an organization dedicated to the study and promotion of natural history. It published a scholarly journal and established a museum. In its first few decades, the s ...

. From 1874 to 1880 Cyrus G. Pringle collected lichens for Sprague's herbarium. In 1856 Charles J. Sprague was elected a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

. His herbarium is now at Boston's Museum of Science.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sprague, Charles James 1823 births 1903 deaths 19th-century American botanists American lichenologists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences