Fernald, Merritt Lyndon

Fernald, Merritt Lyndon

(fûr`nəld), 1873–1950, American botanist, b. Orono, Maine, grad. Harvard, 1897. He taught at Harvard (1902–49) and was director of the Gray Herbarium there from 1937. Fernald was the editor (with Benjamin L. Robinson) of the seventh edition of Asa Gray's manual of botany (1908) and of Rhodora, the journal of the New England Botanical Club; he later edited the eighth, centennial edition of Gray's work (1950). Besides numerous botanical papers and monographs, he wrote (with A. C. Kinsey) Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America (1943).