From what tree did aspirin originally derive?

Aspirin’s historical precursor came from the willow tree, whose bark contains the salicylate compound salicin. The answer is commonly shortened to “willow,” although modern aspirin is not simply powdered willow bark.

In 1763, English clergyman Edward Stone reported to the Royal Society that powdered willow bark helped treat ague, a fever associated with malaria. Chemists later isolated salicin from willow bark and converted related compounds into salicylic acid, providing the chemical path toward aspirin.

The distinction matters: aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, a synthetic compound that does not naturally occur in willow. In the nineteenth century, salicylic acid was also obtained from meadowsweet, a flowering herb—not a tree. The name aspirin is linked partly to Spiraea, an older botanical name associated with meadowsweet.

Bayer scientists produced a stable, pure form of acetylsalicylic acid in 1897 and marketed it as Aspirin from 1899. Thus, willow is the fair quiz answer for aspirin’s botanical origin, while the finished medicine is a later laboratory synthesis.