Pteridomania was a craze for ferns in Victorian England, with people of all classes collecting specimens, growing ferns, and incorporating fern motifs into design. It peaked in the 1860s and spread globally, but faded by the 1890s. Today, relics of pteridomania are highly valued.
Pteridomania was a mania that haunted Victorian England at all levels of society, from royalty to impoverished peasants. The word is a portmanteau of the biological name for ferns and “mania” in the sense of a craze; in other words, pteridomania was a passion for ferns. It manifested itself in a wide variety of ways, from going on collecting expeditions to collect specimens to the inclusion of fern motifs on gravestones, and numerous relics of pteridomania can be seen today in antique shops and in homes with sizable collections of Victoriana .
Most people date the onset of pteridomania to the 1830s, when the British became obsessed with natural history. The opportunity to take a long walk in the woods under the guise of searching and spotting ferns caught on, starting with the middle classes and rippling outwards. In the 1860s, pteridomania was at its peak and had petered out by the 1890s in favor of new obsessions.
In its most basic form, pteridomania was simply traveling to areas where ferns grew and documenting the species found there, sometimes taking samples. Some enthusiasts have even managed to identify completely new species. Others actively grew ferns in ferneries, greenhouses specially designed for growing ferns. Fernery spread far beyond the borders of Britain, as did pteridomania itself, with fern cultivation practiced as far away as Australia.
Fern motifs also integrated into the Victorian design. Fern patterns have appeared in fabrics, embroidery, cast iron, stonework, and cake decorations. Women wore dresses decorated with ferns, traded pressed ferns, painted ferns, and collected illustrations of ferns along with scientific books on ferns. The gates were embellished with cast iron ferns, as were product labels, carriages and just about any surface imaginable.
One of the most particularly interesting things about pteridomania is that it occurred across class boundaries. Participating in the fern craze required no money or sophistication, just an interest in ferns and the time to hunt for them, and as a result, people of all ages, social statuses and economic classes engaged in pteridomania across England. This egalitarian mania was particularly striking given the rigid social boundaries of Victorian society.
Today, Victorian-era items can command a high price, and many of these items betray the rich history of pteridomania in Victorian society. Ferns are subtly embroidered onto vintage clothing, carved into furnishings and lacquered onto trays, taking this craze far beyond its 19th-century origins.
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