Alexander Anderson FRSE FLS (1748–1811) was a Scottish surgeon, explorer and botanist who worked as Superintendent to the Botanical Garden on the Windward Island of Saint Vincent from 1785 to 1811.

Fellow Aberdonian William Forsyth briefly employed him at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, prior to Anderson's emigration to New York in 1774, where he stayed with his brother John, a printer.

[1] After a petition was lodged by physicians William Wright and Thomas Clarke of Jamaica in 1798, Anderson was awarded an honorary 'Degree of Doctor in Physick' from the University of St. Andrews.

Although William Bligh has been credited for the introduction of Breadfruit in the Caribbean, records compiled by the Reverend Lansdown Guilding suggest that Anderson had received specimens - 'previous to thee arrival of the Providence' - when 'a young plant... was sent to the Garden' from French naturalists in Martinique.

[10] Despite Governor Valentine Morris' ostensible 'fondness of horticulture and rural economy', Anderson's predecessor Dr. George Young had previously failed to secure the necessary 'assistance and support' for the Garden between 1772 - 1776, with 'the unhappy state of island politics' precluding the allocation of 'useful labour and funds'.

[12] In North America, some of Anderson's most notable correspondents included Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Vaughan, the then negotiator for Britain in drafting the Treaty of Paris.

Given the Bourbon Monarchy's fundamentally more efficient paradigm of inter-continental plant transfer, French Caribbean islands 'possessed many more' exotic foods, botanic 'necessities, and comforts of life', which Anderson attempted to import for his Garden at St. Vincent.

Given the Island's southerly location and restrictions imposed on foreign visitors by Spanish Governors in South America, he periodically launched expeditions to the colonies of Trinidad and Dutch Guiana, including Berbice, Demerary and Essequibo.

[19] Anderson arrived at Barbadoes on 6 March in order to collect information about navigating Guiana's 'low and dangerous coast' before reaching the mouth of the River Demerary on the 19th.

His description of its volcano and summit was similarly published in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions in 1784, and the expedition was reportedly made possible by the hospitality of an unidentified Frenchman by the name of 'Mr.

[23] Previous to his appointment as Superintendent of the Botanic Garden at St. Vincent, Anderson had spent several months in Grenada before obtaining leave from General Matthews to visit the island of Dominica.

Historians have shown that the profound ecological turbulence wrought by the large-scale cultivation of sugar had by the eighteenth century created a demographically catastrophic disease environment for miscellaneous Caribbean 'fevers'.

[26] In the scramble to find prophylactics drugs and treatments, Anderson experimented with herbal remedies in St. Vincent and later produced his Hortus St. Vincentii:[27] a list of plants then cultivated at the Garden that he believed to be medically efficacious against diseases like 'dropsy', ringworm and rheumatism.