thumb|A Wardian case

The Wardian case was an early type of terrarium, a sealed protective container for plants. It found great use in the 19th century in protecting foreign plants imported to Europe from overseas, the great majority of which had previously died from exposure during long sea journeys, frustrating the many scientific and amateur botanists of the time. The Wardian case was the direct forerunner of the modern terrarium and vivarium and the inspiration for the glass aquarium.

It is named after Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791–1868) of London, who promoted the case after experiments. He published a book titled On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases in 1842. A Scottish botanist named A. A. Maconochie had created a similar terrarium almost a decade earlier, but his failure to publish meant that Ward received credit as the sole inventor.

History and development

thumb|Four distinct styles of Wardian cases

Ward was a physician with a passion for botany. His personally collected herbarium amounted to 25,000 specimens. The ferns in his London garden in Wellclose Square, however, were being poisoned by London's air pollution, which consisted heavily of coal smoke and sulphuric acid.

Ward also kept cocoons of moths and the like in sealed glass bottles, and in one, he found that a fern spore and a species of grass had germinated and were growing in a bit of soil. Interested but not yet seeing the opportunities, he left the seal intact for about four years, noting that the grass actually bloomed once. After that time however, the seal had become rusted, and the plants soon died from the bad air. Understanding the possibilities, he had a carpenter build him a closely fitted glazed wooden case and found that ferns grown in it thrived.

Ward published his experiment and followed it up with a book in 1842, On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases.

English botanists and commercial nurserymen had been passionately prospecting the world for new plants since the end of the 16th century, but these had to travel as seeds or corms, or as dry rhizomes and roots, as salty air, lack of light, lack of fresh water and lack of sufficient care often destroyed all or almost all plants even in large shipments.

The oldest surviving Wardian case is believed to be from circa 1880, discovered at Tregothnan in 1999.

Ward was always active in the Society of Apothecaries of London, of which he became Master in 1854. Until 1899, the Society managed the Chelsea Physic Garden, London, the second oldest botanical garden in the UK. Ward was a founding member of both the Botanical Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Microscopical Society, a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

See also

  • Vivarium
  • Pteridomania
  • Bottle garden
  • Biotope

References

Further reading

  • Biography of Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward
  • David Hershey's website devoted to Ward and his discovery
  • "The Remarkable Case of Dr Ward" at the Telegraph