This is the most famous of British herbals, first published in 1597 with text and illustrations combined from many sources. Half of the text was dedicated to plants found by Gerard growing wild in the English countryside, 180 of which had never been described in print before.
This is a 1636 reprint of the revised 1633 edition, edited by Thomas Johnson (c. 1600-44). Johnson's edition was an almost entirely new work. He included 800 new plant species and replaced Gerard's illustrations, which were often mislabelled or were found in other works, with more than 2,500 newly-commissioned woodcuts. They have been later hand-coloured in this copy. The frontispiece was engraved by John Payne (d. 1648). The Royal Arms of Charles I are stamped onto the book's covers.
The reprint was a mammoth endeavour, it was produced in just twelve months in order to pre-empt John Parkinson's herbal, Theatrum Botanicum, which was originally slated for publication the same year but was later delayed until 1640.

One of the plants represented in this herbal is cacao, or chocolate, which was new to Europe, and the description of the bean is less than enthusiastic: 'The cacoa is a fruit well knowne in divers parts of America, for they in some places use it in stead of money, and to make a drinke, of which, though bitter, they highly esteeme … the fruit is like an Almond taken out of his husk, and it is covered with a thin blacke skin, wherein is contained a kernall obliquely divided into two or three parts, brownish, and distinguished with ash coloured veines, of an astringent and ungratefull taste.'