Volney Morgan Spalding (January 29, 1849 – November 12, 1918) was an American botanist affiliated with the University of Michigan for twenty-eight years, and for most of this period was head of the botany department.

He received a preliminary education in the public schools of Gorham, New York, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The years from 1892 to 1894 he spent at the University of Leipzig, where he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the conclusion of his studies.

He resigned his professorship in 1904 to reside in a more salubrious climate, and became connected with the Desert Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, at Tucson, Arizona, with his wife Effie A. Southworth.

He is the author of "Guide to the Study of Common Plants and Introduction to Botany" (1894), and of a large number of papers in the scientific journals.