Carl Ludwig Sprenger

Carl Ludwig Sprenger was a German botanist, born on 30 November 1846 at Güstrow, Mecklenburg and died 13 December 1917 on the island of Corfu (Kérkyra).

David Fairchild praised Sprenger, "a brilliant botanist who had established a nursery ... he was one of those real plantsmen who both know the names of plants and how to grow them ...

As a German national, he was imprisoned by the Serbs at the outbreak of the First World War, but after an intervention by the local administration of Corfu, they then let him go.

Plants named after him include: Sprenger concluded that by constantly interbreeding the large flowered Crozy canna varieties nothing novel or more remarkable could be secured, and he therefore experimented with some new blood, employing for this purpose Canna flaccida, a species from the southern USA, of medium height and large flowers, with one specially developed petal-like staminode.

[8] At the same time, Luther Burbank in the USA was pursuing a similar approach, the results of which were introduced some two years later than Sprenger's introductions.