About the Book
Gerard's Herball — the Generall Historie of Plantes — is the most famous herbal in English. John Gerard published it in 1597 from his garden in Holborn; Thomas Johnson corrected and enlarged it in 1636; and in 1927 Marcus Woodward distilled that edition into this 'essence,' keeping Gerard's glorious Elizabethan prose, his plant lore, and the original long-s typography.
Gerard writes of plants as neighbors: where they grow, when they flower, what their 'vertues' are, and what the country people say of them. The book ends with his most notorious claim — the Barnacle Tree, whose fruits hatch into geese — which Woodward's endnotes treat with affectionate skepticism.
This digital edition presents the complete keyed text of Woodward's 1927 edition, chapter by chapter, with the editor's introduction and notes.