Gerard, William R. (William Ruggles), 1841-1914.

Gerard was proprietor of a drug store in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He began the study of fungi at a time when few American botanists had devoted attention to that group of plants, his first descriptions of new species appearing in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for October, 1873, before the publication of the earliest mycological papers of Burrill, Ellis, Farlow, or Morgan. In the following year he was one of the founders of the Poughkeepsie Society of Natural Science, in whose Proceedings a number of his botanical papers were published. In 1877 he moved to New York City, where he was an active member of the Torrey Botanical Club for some years.