He studied at the University of Montpellier and practiced medicine in the low countries and England, including positions as personal physicians to two monarchs.

A member of the sixteenth-century Flemish School of Botany, he wrote a series of major treatises on plants in both Latin and Dutch.

[7][a] He lived on Lime Street, London in any area containing many Protestant refugees from the continent ("come for religion"),[8] among fellow Flemings, like James Garrett the apothecary.

Among the English botanists, his closest friend was Thomas Penny, whom he had first met in Montpellier, and to whom he pays tribute in his dedication of the Stirpium adversaria (1571).

[2] Following his studies in Montpellier l'Obel set up a medical practice in England (1566–1571), living initially in London, and then in Somerset, near Bristol at the home of his patron, Edward St.

He was responsible for the establishment of a botanical herb garden there, and would have known Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573–1621), the artist, best known for his meticulous flower paintings, who was a member and eventually dean of the Saint Luke’s Guild in Middelburg.

[21][b] The following year, Gerard was working on a translation of Dodoens's Stirpium historiae pemptades sex (1583),[23] to be published by John Norton, the Queen's Printer.

Sic enim ordine, quo nihil pulchrius in coelo, aut in Sapientis animoAn order, than which nothing more beautiful exists in the heavens, or in the mind of a wise man In the Stirpium of 1571,[31] it is the form of the leaves and their venation that he favoured.

[37][8][38] At the opening of the sixteenth century the general belief was that the plant world had been completely described by Dioscorides, in his De Materia Medica.

Europe became engrossed with natural history from the 1530s, and gardening and cultivation of plants became a passion and prestigious pursuit from monarchs to universities.

Collecting became a discipline, specifically the Kunst- und Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosities) outside of Italy and the study of naturalia became widespread through many social strata.

The great botanists of the sixteenth century were all, like Lobelius, originally trained as physicians, who pursued a knowledge of plants not just for medicinal properties, but in their own right.

Chairs in botany, within medical faculties were being established in European universities throughout the sixteenth century in reaction to this trend, and the scientific approach of observation, documentation and experimentation was being applied to the study of plants.

Following the Protestant Reformation in the mid sixteenth century, and the subsequent Counter-Reformation there was much religious intolerance and persecution, while in the Netherlands the northern provinces started a rebellion against the governing Spaniards, the Eighty Years War (1568–1648).

[8] Lobelius' first publication, Stirpium adversaria nova (1571)[39] was written at the end of his stay in England, published in London and dedicated to Elizabeth I.

Although it was eventually to be the work on which l'Obel's reputation would rest, based on the system of classification that he set out,[40] at the time of its publication, it met with only moderate success and much criticism.

[44][7] A further publication, the Stirpium seu Plantarum Icones (1581)[45] in the form of a Flora was for a long time attributed to l'Obel, despite his name not appearing anywhere in it or mentioning it in his correspondence, and is still sold[46] and displayed in museums[47] as one of his works.

However, there is good evidence that this was a work produced by the well known Antwerp publisher Christophe Plantin for Severinus Gobelius, physician to the Duke of Prussia.

[4][48] Plantin had a large collection of wood-cuts, both produced in his workshop or purchased by him, with which he illustrated many of the major botanical publications of the time,[46] which he assembled according to the classification used by Lobelius in his Kruydtboeck of the same year.