John Gerard

John Gerard (1545 to 1612) was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, first published in 1597, became a popular gardening and herbal book in English in the seventeenth century. The article describes it as largely a plagiarised English translation of Rembert Dodoens' herbal of 1554, with plants added from his own garden and from North America and with drawings and woodcuts mainly taken from continental sources, but with an original title page engraved by William Rogers. Born at Nantwich in Cheshire, he was schooled at Willaston, was apprenticed at about seventeen to the London barber-surgeon Alexander Mason and was admitted to the freedom of the Company of Barbers and Surgeons in 1569. About two decades after his death the book was corrected and expanded to about 1,700 pages.