Pteridomania

Pteridomania and Fern-Fever are terms for the Victorian era craze of fern collecting and fern motifs in decorative art including pottery, glass, metals, textiles, wood, printed paper, and sculpture "appearing on everything from christening presents to gravestones and memorials." [http://www.peterboyd.com/pteridomania.htm Peter D. A. Boyd's Pteridomania] ]

Description

The term pteridomania, which means "Fern Madness" or "Fern Craze", derives from the group of plant to which ferns belong, the "Pteridophytes", and the word "mania" meaning "madness" or "craze". It was coined in 1855 by Charles Kingsley in his book "Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore" in which he wrote:

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.

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 (male and female). New discoveries were published in periodicals, particularly 'The Phytologist' which first appeared in 1841. Ferns proved to be a particularly fruitful group of plants for new records because they had been relatively little studied compared with flowering plants. Also, they 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, subsequently, in the late 1840s and 1850s through the development of a railway network.

Collection and cultivation

The collection of ferns drew enthusiasts from different social classes and it is said 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."

For some a fashionable hobby and for others a more serious scientific pursuit, fern collecting became commercialized 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.

The Wardian case, a forerunner of the modern terrarium, was invented about 1829 by a physician 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. [ [http://www.plantexplorers.com/explorers/biographies/ward/nathaniel-bagshaw-ward.htm Biography of Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward] ] 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. [ [http://www.peterboyd.com/pteridomania2.htm Ferns and Pteridomania in Victorian Scotland] ]

Decorative art

Fern motifs first became conspicuous at 1862 International Exhibition and remained popular "as fond symbol of pleasurable pursuits" until the turn of the century.

As fern fronds are somewhat flat they were used for decoration in ways that many other plants could not. They were glued into collectors' albums, affixed to three dimensional objects, used as stencils for "spatter-work", inkled and pressed into surfaces for nature printing, and so forth.

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 made 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.

While realistic depictions of ferns were especiall favored 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'."

Other species

"Selaginella" and "Lycopodiopsida" and other fern ally plants were also collected and represented on decorative objects.

Effects on native populations

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. [Lusby and Wright (2002) pp. 107–09.]

The Killarney Fern, considered to be one of Europe's most threatened plants [ [http://www.english-nature.org.uk/science/srp/rare_ferns.htm "Species Recovery Programme"] English Nature. Retrieved 26 June 2008.] 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. [Ratcliffe (1977) "Highland Flora". p. 40.] [ [http://www.plant-identification.co.uk/skye/index.htm "Skye Flora"] . plant-identification.co.uk. Retrieved 25 May 2008.] Dickie's Bladder-fern, which was discovered growing on base-rich rocks in a sea cave (known locally as a "yawn") on the coast of Kincardineshire in 1838. [Lusby and Wright (2002) pp. 35–37.] By 1860 the original colony had been apparently 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. [Lusby and Wright (2002) p. 109.] [ [http://193.62.154.38/cgi-bin/nph-readbtree.pl/usedata/maxvals=10/firstval=1?SPECIES_XREF=Cystopteris+dickieana " Cystopteris dickieana"] "Scottish plant uses". Retrieved 4 July 2008.]

Outside the United Kingdom

While interest in ferns may have increased to some degree outside United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, it did not do so to the same extent anywhere else. According to someone at the Rockland Botanical Garden in :

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 do to the fact the American botanists have been for the most part more interested in unraveling the complexities of the species involved in the fern complexes such as
Asplenium, Dryopteris, and Botrychium. [ [http://www.dvfws.org/DVFWS_files/xmasferns.pdf] "The Victorian Fern Craze and the American Christmas Fern" by John D. Scott. First published in the "Dodecatheon" newsletter of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the North America Rock Garden Society.November 2001.]

Nevertheless, the American Fern Society was established in 1893 and now has over 900 members worldwide. The society is based at the Indiana University and counts itself as "one of the largest international fern clubs in the world." [ [http://amerfernsoc.org/] American Fern Society] William Ralph Maxon served repeatedly as the society president . [ [http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FARU0223.htm] Smithsonian Institution Archives]

The Dorrance H. Hamilton Fernery at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania is 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. [ [http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/fern2.html The Dorrance H. Hamilton Fernery] ]

Endnotes

References

* D. E. Allen," The Victorian fern craze", 1969
* David Hershey 1996 "Doctor Ward's Accidental Terrarium". The American Biology Teacher 58:276-281
*cite paper | first = Peter D. A. | last = Boyd | authorlink = | title = Pteridomania - the Victorian passion for ferns | version = Revised: web version | publisher = Antique Collecting 28, 6, 9-12. | date = 2002-01-02 | url = http://www.peterboyd.com/pteridomania.htm | format = | id = | accessdate = 2007-10-02
*Boyd, Peter D. A., [http://www.peterboyd.com/pteridomania2.htm Ferns and Pteridomania in Victorian Scotland]
* Lusby, Phillip and Wright, Jenny (2002) "Scottish Wild Plants: Their History, Ecology and Conservation". Edinburgh. Mercat. ISBN 1841830119.
* Ratcliffe, Derek (1977) "Highland Flora". Inverness. HIDB.