John Gerard

John Gerard (also John Gerarde, c. 1545–1612) was an English botanist with a large herbal garden in London. He was the author of a 1,484-page illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, first published in 1597. It became the most prevalent botany book in English in the 17th century. Except for additions of some plants from his own garden and from North America, Gerard's Herbal is largely an unacknowledged English translation of Rembert Dodoens's herbal, published in 1554, itself highly popular in Dutch, Latin, French and other English translations. Gerard's Herball contains profuse, high-quality drawings of plants, with the printer's woodcuts largely derived from Continental European sources, but there is an original title page with a copperplate engraving by William Rogers. Two decades after Gerard's death, the book was corrected and expanded to about 1700 pages. The botanical genus Gerardia is named in Gerard's honour.