Ferns

In the nineteenth century people started to covet ferns for aesthetic reasons and man’s passion for them reached its zenith. There was such an obsession with their collection and cultivation that it led to a serious reduction in the population of some species.

The Victorian fern craze, or Pteridomania, gathered momentum in the 1840s, and was soon to infect Victorian households at all levels of society. Books and articles maintained that fern growing was a hobby that anyone could enjoy, as ferns would grow in the parlour, conservatory, garden, shady yard or window box. The mania also spread from the living plant to depicting it in architecture and the decorative arts. Even roads, villas and terraced houses were named after the fern. By the start of the twentieth century the craze was starting to fade, although ferns still retained a high degree of popularity until the First World War.

You can read an article that Dr Sarah Whittingham wrote on the Victorians’ passion for ferns in the 1997 issue of the Victorian Society Journal here. She is currently writing a book on the subject.

Sarah would be very pleased to hear from you if you know of the existence of a Victorian or Edwardian fernery.