ELIZABETHAN GARDEN LITERATURE 
149 
was a cabbage “ with crincly leaves,” of a “ blewish green.” 
Gerard mentions also his procuring a yellow gillyflower from 
Poland, showing the extensive range of his collectors. Gerard 
also had a collector, William Marshall, whom he “ sent into 
the Mediterranean,” and who brought him from thence the 
seeds of the plane-tree, and plants of the prickly pear, or 
“ Prickly Indian Fig-tree.” 
J ames Garret is known from other sources also to have been a 
skilful gardener, and especially clever at growing tulips. He was 
a “ learned apothecary of London,” and a good Latin scholar, 
and was generous in imparting knowledge and giving plants to 
both Gerard and Clusius. It would be tedious to go through the 
list of all those referred to by Gerard, as they are very numerous, 
and the muster-roll of these helpful friends could be greatly added 
to by looking into the 1633 edition, where Johnson’s acquaint¬ 
ances are as prominent as those of Gerard. It is refreshing to 
see the way in which these old herbalists wrote to each other, and 
helped one another. Johnson, even more than Gerard, worked 
in harmony with other botanists and physicians, and they went 
expeditions together in search of rare flowers. Johnson wrote 
some Latin tracts descriptive of these tours he made with 
friends in the South and West of England, and constantly in 
the Herbal references to his rambles with other collectors 
occur. In writing of a kind of grass he says : “I never 
found this but once, and that was in the companie of 
Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. James Clarke, Apothecaries of 
London, when riding into Windsore Forest upon search of rare 
plants.” 
Thomas Johnson was born at Selby, in Yorkshire, but was 
himself an apothecary of London, and had a shop on Snow Hill. 
Here it was that the banana was first exhibited in England, 
Gerard having only seen a pickled specimen sent from Aleppo. 
Johnson received the bunch of fruit from Dr. Argent, who had 
obtained it from Bermuda, and hung it up in his shop until it 
ripened. He says : “ Some have judged it the forbidden fruit; 
other-some the grapes brought to Moses out of the Holy Land.” 
He was the most eminent botanist of the time, and obtained 
some distinction as a soldier. He joined the army to fight for 
the Royalist cause, and died from wounds received at Basing in 
