By John Sandham
In the British summer of 1829, while undertaking the collection of a moth pupa into a sealed glass vial, Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868) observed that fern spores and grass seed, captured within the closed environment, could germinate and grow without any outside assistance.… Continue reading
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By Dale Arvidsson –
Long before today’s online world created an insatiable desire for exotic and unusual indoor plants, pteridomania, a Victorian craze between the 1840s and 1890s, saw the desire to collect ferns in Britain and its colonies. Glass houses, conservatories and ‘stumparies’, naturalistic displays of felled trees and exposed roots often shrouded by hardy ferns, allowed the wealthy insatiable collectors to display ferns collected from around the globe.… Continue reading
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