Question: Which botanist published the most popular botany book of his time?

full_context: Document 1: Historia Plantarum (Ray): Historia Plantarum ("The History of Plants") is a botany book by John Ray, published in 1686.
Document 2: Georgius Agricola: Georgius Agricola ( ; 24 March 1494 – 21 November 1555) was a German Catholic, scholar and scientist. Known as "the father of mineralogy", he was born at Glauchau in Saxony. His birth name was Georg Pawer ("Bauer" in modern German); "Agricola" is the Latinized version of his name, by which he was known his entire adult life; "Agricola" and "Bauer" mean "farmer" in their respective languages. He is best known for his book "De Re Metallica" (1556).
Document 3: Jeremias Friedrich Gülich: Jeremias Friedrich Gülich was a dyer in the neighbourhood of Stuttgart: he published "Complete Dyeing and Bleaching Book" an elaborate 6 Volume work on the technical details of dying. He made contributions in improving the body of scientific knowledge on colour. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe praised Jeremias' contribution to optics heavily in his book Theory of Colours. Although Jeremias and Goethe never conversed personally, Jeremias was very pleased to be praised by a figure so well known. Jeremias also helped to set industry standards on dying, most notably of sheep wool. After writing his books between in Sindelfingen between the years of 1776-1778, he ran a military orphanage in Ludwigsburg, where the boys spun cotton and the girls knitted and spun of cotton & flax. In 1785 Jeremias opened his own cotton mill. By the end of his life he had become the sole supplier of clothing to the military and also opened a saltpeter and gunpowder factory.
Document 4: Critica Botanica: Critica Botanica ("Critique of botany", Leiden, July, 1737) was written by Swedish botanist, physician, zoologist and naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). The book was published in Germany when Linnaeus was twenty-nine with a discursus by the botanist Johannes Browallius (1707–1755), bishop of Åbo. The first and only edition was published in July 1737 under the full title "Critica botanica in qua nomina plantarum generica, specifica & variantia examini subjiciuntur, selectoria confirmantur, indigna rejiciuntur; simulque doctrina circa denominationem plantarum traditur. Seu Fundamentorum botanicorum pars IV Accedit Johannis Browallii De necessitate historiae naturalis discursus".
Document 5: John Gerard: John Gerard, also spelt John Gerarde, (c. 1545–1612) was a botanist and herbalist. He maintained a large herbal garden in London. His chief notability is as the author of a large (1,484 pages) illustrated "Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes". First published in 1597, it was the most widely circulated botany book in English in the 17th century. Except for the additions of a number of plants from his own garden and from North America, Gerard's "Herbal" is largely an unacknowledged English translation of Rembert Dodoens's herbal originally published in 1554, itself also highly popular (in Dutch, Latin, French and other English translations).
Document 6: John Tradescant the Elder: John Tradescant the Elder ( ; c. 1570s – 15–16 April 1638), father of John Tradescant the younger, was an English naturalist, gardener, collector and traveller, probably born in Suffolk, England. He began his career as head gardener to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House, who initiated Tradescant in travelling by sending him to the Low Countries for fruit trees in 1610/11. He was kept on by Robert's son William, to produce gardens at the family's London house, Salisbury House. He then designed gardens on the site of St Augustine's Abbey for Edward Lord Wotton in 1615-23.
Document 7: Gerard Johnson (sculptor): Gerard Johnson (Dutch: "Gheerart Janssen"; fl. 1612–1623) was a sculptor working in Jacobean England who is thought to have created Shakespeare's funerary monument. In May 1612 he was paid for making part of a fountain for the east garden at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire.
Document 8: Georg Andreas Agricola: Georg Andreas Agricola or Georgio Andrea Agricola or Georg Andreas Bauer or George André Agricola ( ; 1672–1738) was a German physician and botanist from Regensburg.
Document 9: Gerard Johnson the elder: Gerard Johnson the elder (d. 1611) is the Anglicised form of Gheerart Janssen, a Dutch sculptor who operated a monument workshop in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and the father of Gerard Johnson the younger, who is thought to have created Shakespeare's funerary monument. He and Cornelius Cure became the leaders of the so-called Southwark school of monument design, which dominated the English market in the late-sixteenth century.
Document 10: Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus: Jacobus Theodorus (Jakob Dietrich), called Tabernaemontanus (1525 – August 1590) was a physician and an early botanist and herbalist, the "father of "German botany" whose illustrated "Neuwe Kreuterbuch" (1588) or "Eicones Plantarum" (Frankfurt, 1590) was the result of a lifetime's botanizing and medical practice. It provided unacknowledged material for John Gerard's better-known "Herball" (London, 1597) and was reprinted in Germany throughout the 17th century. His Latinized name represented a translation of his native town, Bergzabern (literally ‘mountain taverne’) in the Palatinate. Tabernaemontanus began as a student of the pioneer of Renaissance botany, Hieronymus Bock.
Document 11: Jan Baptist van Helmont: Jan Baptist van Helmont ( ; ] ; 12 January 1580 – 30 December 1644) was a Flemish chemist, physiologist, and physician. He worked during the years just after Paracelsus and the rise of iatrochemistry, and is sometimes considered to be "the founder of pneumatic chemistry". Van Helmont is remembered today largely for his ideas on spontaneous generation, his 5-year tree experiment, and his introduction of the word "gas" (from the Greek word "chaos") into the vocabulary of scientists.
Document 12: James Gordon (botanist): James Gordon (1708–1780) was a gardener who became a nurseryman, and later a seed merchant in London, specializing in exotics such as camellia and rhododendron; he is also credited with the introduction of the American Elm, "Ulmus americana", in 1752.Appointed gardener to James Sherard at Eltham in 1730, he progressed to Lord Petre's estate at Thorndon Hall, Essex, in 1738 before starting a nursery at Mile End in 1742, later moving to Bow, and establishing a seed shop at Thistle & Crown, 25 Fenchurch Street. His sons, William, James, and Alexander, assumed control of the nursery in 1776. Although a correspondent of Linnaeus, he never wrote works of his own. "He had more knowledge in vegetation than all the gardeners and writers in England put together, but is too modest to publish anything" He died at Barking, Essex, on 20 December 1780.
Document 13: Tabernaemontana: Tabernaemontana is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae. It has a pan-tropical distribution, found in Asia, Africa, Australia, North America, South America, and a wide assortment of oceanic islands. These plants are shrubs and small trees growing to 1–15 m tall. The leaves are evergreen, opposite, 3–25 cm long, with milky sap; hence it is one of the diverse plant genera commonly called "milkwood". The flowers are fragrant, white, 1–5 cm in diameter.
Document 14: Euphorbus (physician): Euphorbus was the Greek physician of Juba II. He wrote that a succulent plant, similar to the Euphorbia, was a powerful laxative. In 12 BC, Juba named this plant after his physician Euphorbus in response to Augustus dedicating a statue to Antonius Musa, Augustus's own personal physician and Euphorbus' brother.
Document 15: University of Oxford Botanic Garden: The University of Oxford Botanic Garden is the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. The garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden growing plants for medicinal research. Today it contains over 8,000 different plant species on 1.8 ha . It is one of the most diverse yet compact collections of plants in the world and includes representatives from over 90% of the higher plant families.
ground_truth: John Gerard