John Gerard (botanist)

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John Gerard
Illustration of the potato in Gerard's The Herball (1597)

John Gerard or Gerarde (* 1545 in Nantwich , † February 1612 in London ) was an English surgeon and botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " J. Gerard ".

Life

After a school education in Wisterson , John Gerard went to London in 1562 to learn the trade of bath . Seven years later he was able to open his own practice. In 1607 he became a master in the London guild, the "Barber-Surgeon's company". In 1598 he had to decide on the admission of apprentices to the guild.

During his studies Gerard took an interest in plants and laid out his garden near his house in Holborn . There he collected and cultivated rare plants. He had contacts with Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake , from whom he bought, among other things, the potato , which he called the Virginia potato to better distinguish it from the sweet potato .

In order to expand his knowledge of plants, he worked for a while as a ship's doctor and came to Denmark , Latvia , Poland , Moscow and Sweden . From 1577 he was a gardener for William Cecil , an advisor to Queen Elizabeth . In 1588 he proposed to create a botanical garden at Cambridge University .

Tabor assumes that William Shakespeare may have known Gerard and may even know his garden firsthand. He lived between 1598 and 1604 on the corner of Mugwell Street (today's Monkswell Street) and Silver Street in what was then Ward Cripplegate , so very close to Gerard. The Bader Guild House was also near Shakespeare's quarters.

Works

In 1596 he published a list of the plants in his garden, the first of its kind in England. In the expanded and revised edition that appeared in 1599, he shortened the long descriptions of plants as much as possible. 17% consisted of just one word, the name of the plant. Long before Linnaeus , 57% managed with two words.

His main work, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes , appeared in 1597. It was dedicated to Lord Cecil. Although he describes it in the preface as “the first fruits of his own labor”, the text is largely based on the work Stirpium historiae pemptades by Rembert Dodoens published in 1583, but Gerard changed the order of the plants based on the model of Stirpium Adversaria Nova by Matthias de L'Obel (1570). He took most of the woodcuts from the Icones stirpium by Tabernaemontanus , published in 1590 . A few pictures come from himself, for example the first picture of a potato plant. In the foreword he emphasizes the aesthetic effect of the gardens ( "... what greater delight is there than to beholde the earth appareled with plants, as with a robe of imbroidered worke, set on with orient perles and garnished with great diuersitie of great and costly iewels? " ), but also the useful and medicinal plants that are grown here.

Among the gardeners who are known from written tradition, he mentions Salomon ( "... he was able to set out the nature of all plantes, from hightest cedar to the lowest mosse" ), as well as Mithridates the Great of Pontus, Euax of Arabia, known from medieval tradition, and the Roman emperor Diocletian . In the present, however, knowledge of plants is neglected, with a few laudable exceptions such as Lord Cecil. The work consists of three books:

  • Book 1 covers grasses, tubers and bulbous plants
  • Book 2 Spice Plants, Medicinal Herbs and Fragrant Herbs
  • Book 3 Trees, shrubs and bushes as well as fruit-bearing bushes, roses, heather, resins, mosses, mushrooms and corals.

Each plant is listed with its English and Latin name as well as the foreign names (" barbarous names "). Furthermore, Gerard promises the reader a description of their varieties, properties and uses as well as their occurrence.

Afterlife

John Gerard Garden at Barber's Hall on the London City Walls

In 1987 the London barbers and fieldmen 's guild laid out a garden next to their guild hall in Wood Street (EC2) in a bastion of the London city wall, which contains many plants from John Gerard's plant book. It is said to be on the site of John Gerard's herb garden.

Honor taxon

Charles Plumier named in his honor, the plant genus Gerardia in the family of Figworts (Scrophulariaceae). Carl von Linné later took over this name.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. John Norton, London 1597 ( online ); further editions in 1633 ("very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Citizen and Apothecarye of London") and 1636
  • Catalogus arborum, fruticum ac plantarum tam indigenarum, quam exoticarum in horto Johannis Gerardi . London 1596, 2nd edition 1599 ( online ).

proof

literature

  • Wilfrid Blunt: The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History . Dover Publications, 1994, ISBN 0-486-27265-6 .
  • BD Jackson: A catalog of plants cultivated in the garden of John Gerard, in the years 1596-1599, Edited with notes, with references to Gerard's Herball, the addition of modern names and a life of the author , London 1876 (with reprint des Catalogus arborum )
  • RH Jeffers: The friends of John Gerard (1545-1612) , Falls Village, Connecticut 1967
  • CE Raven: English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray , Cambridge 1947
  • Gordon Douglas Rowley: A History of Succulent Plants . Strawberry Press, 1997, ISBN 0-912647-16-0 .
  • William T. Stearn: Gerard, John , Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Volume 5, pp. 361-363
  • Marcus Woodward: Gerard's Herball, the essence thereof distilled , London 1927, reprinted 1964

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Abigail Willis: The London Garden Book AZ . London, Metro 2012, p. 149
  2. ^ Edward Tabor, Plant Poisons in Shakespeare. Economic Botany 24, 1, 1970, 86
  3. ^ Edward Tabor, Plant Poisons in Shakespeare. Economic Botany 24, 1, 1970, 86
  4. ^ John Gerard: The Herball or General Historie of Plantes . London 1597: The Epistle Dedicatorie, no pagination
  5. ↑ mentioned about in Ulrich von Zatzikhofen's Lanzelet
  6. ^ John Gerard: The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes London 1597, p. 1.
  7. ^ The Worshipful Company of Barbers of London
  8. ^ Elspeth Thompson, The London Gardener, Guide and sourcebook, 160
  9. ^ Charles Plumier: Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera . Leiden 1703, p. 30f.
  10. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica . Leiden 1737, p. 92.
  11. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . Leiden 1742, p. 289.

Web links

Commons : John Gerard  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Gerard, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerarde, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English botanist
DATE OF BIRTH 1545
PLACE OF BIRTH Nantwich
DATE OF DEATH February 1612
Place of death London