Merritt Lyndon Fernald (October 5, 1873 - September 22, 1950) was an American botanist. In his time he was regarded as the most respected scholar of the taxonomy and phytogeography of the vascular plant flora of temperate eastern North America. He published more than 850 scientific papers and wrote and edited the seventh and eighth editions of Gray's Manual of Botany. Fernald also wrote a book Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America in 1919-1920 with Alfred Kinsey, published in 1943.