John Gerard - Publications

Publications

In 1596, Gerard published a list of rare plants he cultivated in his own garden at Holborn, where he introduced exotic plants from the New World, including a plant he misidentified as the Yucca. The Yucca failed to bloom during his lifetime, but a pip taken from his plant later bloomed for a contemporary. To this day Yucca bears the name Gerard gave it. A copy of the list of plants in his garden, published in 1596, exists in the British Museum. In 1597, Gerard published his famous Great Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes. The 1597 edition reused hundreds of woodblocks from Eicones Plantarum (1590) by Jacobus Theodorus, which themselves had been reused from earlier 16th botanical books by Mattioli, Dodoens, Clusius, and Lobelius. The plant drawings in the 1633 and 1636 editions used hundreds of woodblocks originally made for an edition of Rembert Dodoens's herbal; the woodblocks were shipped from Antwerp to London for the purpose.

Because it was a practical and useful book, packed with helpful drawings of plants, and because Gerard had a fluid and lively writing manner, Herball was popular with ordinary literate people in 17th century England. There is evidence of the book still being in practical use even in the early 19th century.

The 1633 edition of Gerard's Herball was edited by Thomas Johnson, an apothecary and botanist who lived in London, under commission from the heirs to the estate of John Gerard. His edition contained many corrections and new information based on empirical observation. Through anecdotal comments, Johnson carefully distanced himself from the original work. For example, he wrote of the entry on the saffron crocus, "Our author in this chapter was of many minds." Gerard can be considered one of the founders of botany in English language, but he was not well educated, and he was not an outstanding botanist in terms of technical knowledge in his own time according to his critics.