These are some good examples of the attempts at organization and nomenclature of plants at a time when there really was no classification system in place (Knight 66-67).  Thus, the names are sometimes quite poetic and imaginative (66-67).  On the more mystical plants in his Herball, Gerard was actually aware that plants such as the “mandrake” had a fantastical history and he stated so in his account of such plants (108).  According to Knight, he may have included them to highlight the way botanists doing “scholarly writing” would sometimes simply copy ancient texts verbatim, regardless of outdated information (108).

 

Works Cited

Knight, Leah. Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture. Surrey, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.

A printed herbal of the 16th century is an encyclopedia, which includes illustration, descriptions of plants’ habitat, known names, appearance, and virtues or medicinal properties (Leah Knight, “Of Books and Botany” 22).  In addition to these characteristics, herbals in the 16th century also showed a kind of fusion between the literary and the scientific (Knight 25).  This was demonstrated in Gerard’s Herball with his reference to “Adam’s Apple Tree,” a name which Paul Cox links to Milton and Paradise Lost (“The Promise of Gerard’s Herball” 51).  Gerard often makes references to literary figures, such as Virgil and others, as well as including folklore about the plants.

 

 

Works Cited

Cox, Paul. “The Promise of Gerard’s Herball: New Drugs from Old Books.” Endeavour, vol. 22, no. 2, 1998, pp. 51-53, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-9327(98)01111-9. Accessed 20 March 2018.

Knight, Leah. Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture. Surrey, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.