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Pteridomania or fern fever was a Victorian craze for ferns. Decorative arts of the period presented the fern motif in pottery, glass, metal, textiles, wood, printed paper, and sculpture, with ferns "appearing on everything from christening presents to gravestones and memorials". [1]
Pteridomania, meaning Fern Madness or Fern Craze, a compound of Pteridophytes and mania , was coined in 1855 by Charles Kingsley in his book Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore:
Your daughters, perhaps, have been seized with the prevailing 'Pteridomania' ... and wrangling over unpronounceable names of species (which seem different in each new Fern-book that they buy) ... and yet you cannot deny that they find enjoyment in it, and are more active, more cheerful, more self-forgetful over it, than they would have been over novels and gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool. [1]
According to one author:
Although the main period of popularity of ferns as a decorative motif extended from the 1850s until the 1890s, the interest in ferns had really begun in the late 1830s when the British countryside attracted increasing numbers of amateur and professional botanists. New discoveries were published in periodicals, particularly The Phytologist: a popular botanical miscellany , which first appeared in 1844. [2] Ferns proved to be a particularly fruitful group of plants for new records because they had been studied less than flowering plants. Also, ferns were most diverse and abundant in the wilder, wetter, western and northern parts of Britain which were becoming more accessible through the development of better roads and the railway. [1]
The collection of ferns drew enthusiasts from different social classes, leading naturalist Peter D A Boyd to write that "even the farm labourer or miner could have a collection of British ferns which he had collected in the wild and a common interest sometimes brought people of very different social backgrounds together". [1]
For some a fashionable hobby and for others a more serious scientific pursuit, fern collecting became commercialised with the sale of merchandise for fern collectors. Equipped with The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland or one of the many other books sold for fern identification, collectors sought out ferns from dealers and in their native habitats across the British Isles and beyond. Fronds were pressed in albums for display in homes. Live plants were also collected for cultivation in gardens and indoors. Nurseries provided not only native species but exotic species from the Americas and other parts of the world. [1]
The Wardian case, a forerunner of the modern terrarium, was invented about 1829 by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward to protect his ferns from the air pollution of 19th century London. Wardian cases soon became features of stylish drawing rooms in Western Europe and the United States and helped spread the fern craze and the craze for growing orchids that followed. [3] Ferns were also cultivated in fern houses (greenhouses devoted to ferns) and in outdoor ferneries.
Besides approximately seventy native British species and natural hybrids of ferns, horticulturalists of this era were very interested in so-called monstrosities – odd variants of wild species. From these they selected hundreds of varieties for cultivation. Polystichum setiferum , Athyrium filix-femina , and Asplenium scolopendrium , for example, each yielded about three hundred different varieties. [1] [4]
Fern motifs first became conspicuous at the 1862 International Exhibition and remained popular "as fond symbol of pleasurable pursuits" until the turn of the century. [1]
As fern fronds are somewhat flat they were used for decoration in ways that many other plants could not be. They were glued into collectors' albums, affixed to three dimensional objects, used as stencils for "spatter-work", inked and pressed into surfaces for nature printing, and so forth. [1]
Fern pottery patterns were introduced by Wedgwood, Mintons Ltd, Royal Worcester, Ridgeway, George Jones, and others, with various shapes and styles of decoration including majolica. A memorial to Sir William Jackson Hooker, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was commissioned from Josiah Wedgwood and Sons and erected in Kew Church in 1867 with jasperware panels with applied sprigs representing exotic ferns. A copy was presented to what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum where it may still be seen. [1]
While realistic depictions of ferns were especially favoured in the decorative arts of this period, "Even when the representation was stylised such as was common on engraved glass and metal, the effect was still recognisably 'ferny'." [1]
The sweet biscuit from the British Isles known as a Custard Cream is classically decorated with a fern motif on the outer surfaces regardless of who it is manufactured by, with a design that dates back to the Victorian era. [5]
Selaginella and Lycopodiopsida and other fern ally plants were also collected and represented on decorative objects. [1]
The zeal of Victorian collectors led to significant reductions in the wild populations of a number of the rarer species. Oblong woodsia came under severe threat in Scotland, especially in the Moffat Hills. This area once had the most extensive UK populations of the species but there now remain only a few small colonies whose future remains under threat. The related Alpine woodsia suffered a similar fate, although the risks were not all to the plants. John Sadler, later a curator of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, nearly lost his life obtaining a fern tuft on a cliff near Moffat, and a botanical guide called William Williams died collecting Alpine Woodsia in Wales in 1861. His body was found at the foot of the cliff where Edward Lhwyd had first collected the species nearly two centuries earlier. [6] In her botanical guidebook and memoir Hardy Ferns (1865), the writer Nona Bellairs called for laws to protect ferns from over-collection: "We must have 'Fern laws', and preserve them like game". [7]
The Killarney fern, considered to be one of Europe's most threatened plants [8] and once found on Arran, was thought to be extinct in Scotland due to the activities of 19th century collectors, but the species has since been discovered on Skye in its gametophyte form. [9] [10] Another example is Dickie's bladder-fern, which was discovered growing on base-rich rocks in a sea cave on the coast of Kincardineshire in 1838. [11] By 1860 the original colony seemed to have been extirpated, although the species has recovered and today there is a population of more than 100 plants there, where it grows in a roof fissure. [12] [13]
Pteridomania is "usually considered a British eccentricity", [14] and historians are divided regarding its reach outside the United Kingdom. John D. Scott has written:
The craze seemed to have passed America by – most likely because these same species in America are essentially free of these "freaky" abnormal forms. It may also be due to the fact the American botanists have been for the most part more interested in unravelling the complexities of the species involved in the fern complexes such as Asplenium, Dryopteris, and Botrychium. [15]
On the other hand, historian Sarah Whittingham has "turned up much proof that it reached American shores" [14] in her book, Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania. [16] The American Fern Society was established in 1893 and now has over 900 members worldwide. The society is based at Indiana University and counts itself as "one of the largest international fern clubs in the world." [17] William Ralph Maxon served repeatedly as the society president. [18]
The Dorrance H. Hamilton Fernery at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania is the only remaining freestanding Victorian fernery in North America. It has a curved Victorian-style glass roof and turned 100 years old in 1999. Designed by John Morris, the arboretum's namesake, the Fernery is said to embody "some of the many passions of the Victorians: a love of collecting, a veneration of nature, and the fashion of romantic gardens...its filigree roof sparkling in sunlight. [19]
Pteridomania had negative effects on the Australian environment, in Queensland fern fever saw plants stripped from their natural habitats to feed the appetites of collectors. Epiphytic ferns like Staghorns and Bird's nests were collected from the wild as they became popular decorative pieces that could be hung. An aesthetic quite peculiar to Queensland was the sight of staghorns adorning public and private infrastructure including Parliament House and major train stations. This practice persisted well into the late twentieth century. [20]
The ferns are a group of vascular plants that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients, and in having life cycles in which the branched sporophyte is the dominant phase.
The Wardian case was an early type of terrarium, a sealed protective container for plants. It found great use in the 19th century in protecting foreign plants imported to Europe from overseas, the great majority of which had previously died from exposure during long sea journeys, frustrating the many scientific and amateur botanists of the time. The Wardian case was the direct forerunner of the modern terrarium and vivarium and the inspiration for the glass aquarium.
A frond is a large, divided leaf. In both common usage and botanical nomenclature, the leaves of ferns are referred to as fronds and some botanists restrict the term to this group. Other botanists allow the term frond to also apply to the large leaves of cycads, as well as palms (Arecaceae) and various other flowering plants, such as mimosa or sumac. "Frond" is commonly used to identify a large, compound leaf, but if the term is used botanically to refer to the leaves of ferns and algae it may be applied to smaller and undivided leaves.
Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward was an English doctor who popularised a case for growing and transporting plants which was called the Wardian case.
A fernery is a specialized garden for the cultivation and display of ferns.
The Geelong Botanic Gardens is a botanical garden in the city of Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The gardens are located within Eastern Park on the eastern outskirts of the central business district. They were established in 1850 and are the fourth oldest botanic garden in Australia.
Plant collecting is the acquisition of plant specimens for the purposes of research, cultivation, or as a hobby. Plant specimens may be kept alive, but are more commonly dried and pressed to preserve the quality of the specimen. Plant collecting is an ancient practice with records of a Chinese botanist collecting roses over 5000 years ago.
The Morris Arboretum & Gardens of the University of Pennsylvania is the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Arboretum is open daily except for major holidays. It is located at 100 East Northwestern Avenue, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Thomas Moore was a British gardener and botanist. An expert on ferns and fern allies from the British Isles, he served as Curator of the Society of Apothecaries Garden from 1848 to 1887. In 1855 he authored The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland.The standard author abbreviation T.Moore is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Woodsia is a genus of ferns in the family Woodsiaceae. Species of Woodsia are commonly known as cliff ferns. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I), it was the only genus in the family Woodsiaceae. In 2020, Physematium was split off from Woodsia on the basis of molecular phylogenetic evidence. As of June 2023, Plants of the World Online continued to treat Physematium as a synonym of Woodsia.
The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland was a book published in 1855 that featured 51 plates of nature printing by Henry Bradbury.
The flora of Scotland is an assemblage of native plant species including over 1,600 vascular plants, more than 1,500 lichens and nearly 1,000 bryophytes. The total number of vascular species is low by world standards but lichens and bryophytes are abundant and the latter form a population of global importance. Various populations of rare fern exist, although the impact of 19th-century collectors threatened the existence of several species. The flora is generally typical of the north-west European part of the Palearctic realm and prominent features of the Scottish flora include boreal Caledonian forest, heather moorland and coastal machair. In addition to the native species of vascular plants there are numerous non-native introductions, now believed to make up some 43% of the species in the country.
Woodsia alpina, commonly known as alpine woodsia, is a fern found in northern latitudes in North America and Eurasia. Also known as northern woodsia or alpine cliff fern, it is typically found in crevices, scree slopes and cliffs containing slate and calcareous rocks, especially limestone.
Woodsia ilvensis, commonly known as oblong woodsia, is a fern found in North America and northern Eurasia. Also known as rusty woodsia or rusty cliff fern, it is typically found on sunny, exposed cliffs and rocky slopes and on thin, dry, acidic soils.
Cystopteris dickieana, commonly known as Dickie's bladder-fern, is a fern with a wide distribution in the Northern Hemisphere. There is debate amongst botanists as to whether it is a species in its own right or a variant of C. fragilis.
Richard Pearce was a British plant collector, who introduced the tuberous begonia to England, which led to the development of the hybrid begonias grown today.
Fern sports are plants that show marked change from the normal type or parent stock as a result of mutation. The term Morphotype is also used for any of a group of different types of individuals of the same species in a population. Fern fronds in sports are typically altered in several ways, such as the frond apex divided and pinnae similarly duplicated.
Rockhampton Botanic Gardens is a heritage-listed botanic garden at 100 Spencer Street, The Range, Rockhampton, Rockhampton Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1873 to 1930s. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 23 July 1999.
Flecker Botanic Gardens is a heritage-listed botanic garden at Collins Avenue, Edge Hill, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1886 to 1960s. It is now known as Cairns Botanic Gardens. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 2 February 2007.
Una Leonora Foster Weatherby was an American botanical illustrator, botanical collector, and researcher of gravestones. The daughter of a Texas businessman and lawyer, she graduated college and trained as an artist in early life. During a European trip, she met the botanist Charles Alfred Weatherby, was commissioned to illustrate his works, and the two subsequently married. She continued to collect and illustrate plants, taking a particular interest in ferns, and left a bequest to the American Fern Society after her death. She and her husband were also interested in early American gravestones and their decoration.
This Wikipedia article incorporates text from Queensland’s fern fever (31 August 2021) published by the State Library of Queensland under CC BY licence , accessed on 30 September.