'Of all the many passions and crazes in nineteenth-century gardening and natural history, none was as long lasting or as wide reaching as fern fever, or Pteridomania as it became known. The obsession with ferns was not confined to a few professional botanists but it affected men, women and children[...]
Fern Fever (or Pteridomania, to give it its official name), was popular in Britain between 1837 and 1914. Although in previous centuries ferns played an important role in customs and folklore, it was only in this period that they were coveted for aesthetic reasons. The fern craze started to gather m[...]