A MOVE TO ELEGANCE

Interest in British natural history exploded during the Victorian era. It was part of a trend away from the bright, gaudy colours of flowers, towards a love of intricacy, delicacy, shape and form. Two independent botanical societies were established, in London and in Edinburgh, in 1836. Members were encouraged to go into the countryside to record and collect plants. Part of this interest became a fascination for ferns. The term pteridomania, from pterido, the Latin for ferns, was coined by Charles Kingsley, naturalist and author of The Water-Babies. They were described as “objects of exquisite elegance”, and linked with a love of things Gothic. This soon extended to the cultivation of ferns, collected from the wild or propagated from spores. The discovery of the fern life cycle established that spores from the underside of a fern frond grew into small, often heart-shaped, green prothalli. These bore sex organs that required water for fertilisation, resulting in the growth of the new fern plant. Many plant nurseries included ferns, both native and exotic, among their collections. The importation of these plants from as far afield as Australia and the Americas was helped by the invention of the Wardian case, an enclosed, glazed miniature greenhouse. Smaller ornamental cases found a niche in the drawing rooms of industrial cities around Britain. There, ferns could be grown and displayed, safe from the fumes of smoke and smog. In the garden, naturalistic displays of ferns were encouraged. Shirley Hibberd, in The Fern Garden (1872), proposed “a garden with gravel walks amidst rocks and waterfalls, and on every bend the ferns present themselves in sheets of delicious verdure or in waving palm-like masses, or in a glorious confusion of brakes and lastrea intermingled as if the dryads themselves attended to the planting”. He recommended building a heated fernery on a slope to gain from the range in temperature that could be realised. Such ferneries were luxuries that could be developed only on large estates or in public gardens.