David Moore (23 April 1808 – 9 June 1879) was a Scottish botanist who served as director of the Irish National Botanic Gardens for over 40 years.

He received his initial botanical training from conservator of the Dundee Rational Institution Museum, Douglas Gardiner.

He then became an apprentice at the Earl of Camperdown near Dundee under the head gardener Mr Howe, later working at James Cunningham's nursery, Edinburgh.

[1][2] In November 1828 he migrated to Ireland and became foreman and assistant to James Townsend Mackay in the Trinity College Botanic Gardens in Dublin.

While working under Mackay, Moore developed an interest in Irish flora which led him to being appointed to the Ordnance Survey as botanist in 1833.

[1][3][4] During these surveys he discovered the narrow small-reed Calamagrostis stricta, and the club-sedge Carex buxbaumii, which are now both extinct in the wild.

In this role, he travelled widely in the United Kingdom and Europe collecting rarer and unusual specimens for the Gardens.

During his tenure, he also oversaw the renewal of the Garden's glass houses, and amassed a collection of insectivorous plants.

He served as an advisory commissioner to the Paris exhibition in 1867, and as a juror on the Botanical and Horticultural Congress in Saint Petersburg in 1869.

[3] The Botanic Gardens were moved from the control of the Royal Dublin Society to the government Department of Science and Art in 1878, with Moore remaining in his post as director.

[1] In 1866 Moore published, with Alexander Goodman More, Contributions towards a Cybele Hibernica, being Outlines of the Geographical Distribution of Plants in Ireland.