CHAPTER IV 
FERNS 
Fern 
Collections. 
Kew has for over half-a-century been the headquarters of fern culti- 
vation. Sir William Hooker was for many years the leading authority 
on the botany of ferns, and he was ably seconded by 
Mr. J. Smith, the first curator, not only as a cultivator, 
but in scientific insight also. After Hooker’s death in 
1865, Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., late keeper of the Kew Herbarium, 
took his place as the leading authority, and their joint work, the 
Synopsis Filicum, published in 1868, is still the one on which the 
nomenclature of ferns is based. Although the collection at Kew 
is richer and more comprehensive now than ever it was before, ferns 
do not fill quite so conspicuous a place in the horticultural world 
as they did about 1850. They were never so eagerly sought after 
as orchids are now, but a collection of ferns was a frequent feature 
in gardens of the mid- Victorian period. They still hold a very 
important position in glass-house gardening, but this position is 
utilitarian only, that is to say, they are grown for their decorative 
value merely. The collector’s ideal of getting together as many types 
as possible has disappeared. It is on the collections of Kew, and 
in a lesser degree of similar establishments, therefore, that the student 
of ferns has to rely for much of his material. Many species are not 
to be found in cultivation elsewhere. 
In the “ Epitome of the Hortus Kewensis,” published by W. T. 
Aiton in 1814, about 115 species of ferns are enumerated. By 1822 
the exotic species, previously about eighty, had become reduced 
by one-half, and these were scattered about in various houses. John 
Smith, however, who was then foreman, brought them together in 
a lean-to house, which partly covered the site of the present tropical 
fernery. This may be said to have constituted the nucleus of the 
collection of ferns which afterwards attained such magnificent 
dimensions, for from that time it gradually increased in size and 
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