Sir Henry Alexander Wickham (May 29, 1846 – September 27, 1928) was a British explorer.
He later claims in publicity that he was responsible for stealing about 70,000 seed from the rubber-bearing tree, Hevea brasiliensis, in the Santarém area of Brazil in 1876.
However there was, in fact, no law at this time forbidding their export and it would appear that Wickham was trying to make his actions more exciting than they really were.
These seeds he accompanies to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, from where seedlings are dispatched to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaysia, Africa, Batavia, and other tropical destinations, thus dooming the Amazonian rubber boom.
