Publications
The Garden
August 2003
Labour of love lies awaiting
Brent Elliott highlights a series of more than 600 drawings for a work on ferns that was never published
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| Images: RHS Lindley Library |
From the 1840s until the end of the 19th century was the period of the fern craze, pteridomania. Fern collecting and growing attracted a highly active following, and sustained a market for illustrated fern books of high quality. Works by such as Sir William Jackson Hooker, Thomas Moore, Francis George Heath and George Schneider depicted hundreds of fern species and cultivars.
However John Houlston, a contemporary, wrote, ‘Numerous as the works on Pteridology are, they in a measure fail to point out (to my mind) the exact distinguishing characters of each particular Genera and Species, by which… the cultivator, can with an absolute certainty recognize, or determine the particular plant he cultivates, or may have to examine.’ To remedy this deficiency, Houlston embarked on a series of 631 fern portraits, now held in the Lindley Library.
John Houlston was born in Ludchurch, Carmarthen, in 1812. His date of death has not yet been traced, but he was still living in Kensington in 1887. During the 1840s he was a foreman at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the fern collection was his special responsibility. At that time he made most of the watercolours for a book on ferns, projected by botanist Thomas S Ralph (1813 - 91), but never published; those shown above are the first ever to have appeared in print.
Houlston seems to have assembled his fern drawings in the early 1860s as a three-volume work. With his accompanying notes on the culture and history of each species, they form a significant testament to the great age of fern enthusiasm.
Brent Elliott is RHS Librarian and Archivist
The RHS Lindley Library holds more than 50,000 books, 1,500 periodicals, 25,000 botanical drawings, and the UK's largest collection of horticultural trade catalogues.
The works shown are held in the picture library of the RHS Lindley Library and may be consulted at the London branch at 80 Vincent Square, London, and is open to the public Monday - Friday, 9.30am - 5.30pm.
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