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Wardian case
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==History and development== [[Image:Wardian cases.jpg|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 [[fern]]s in his [[London]] garden in [[Wellclose Square]], however, were being poisoned by London's [[air pollution]], which consisted heavily of coal smoke and [[sulfuric acid|sulphuric acid]]. Ward also kept [[Cocoon (silk)|cocoon]]s of [[moth]]s and the like in sealed glass bottles, and in one, he found that a fern [[spore]] and a species of [[Poaceae|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.<ref name=GAERTNER>{{cite news|first=Hansjörg |last=Gadient|title=Exotische Pflanzen - Matrosen sind keine Gärtner|url=http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/0,1518,716382,00.html|accessdate=6 September 2011|newspaper=[[Spiegel Online]]|date=12 September 2010|language=German}}</ref> 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 [[botanist]]s 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 [[Seed|seeds]] or [[Corm|corms]], or as dry [[rhizome]]s 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.<ref name=GAERTNER/> With the new Wardian cases, tender young plants could be set on deck to benefit from daylight and the [[Condensation|condensed]] moisture within the case that kept them watered, but protected from salt spray.<ref name=Atlantic2017/> The first test of the glazed cases was made in July 1833, when Ward shipped two specially constructed glazed cases filled with British ferns and grasses all the way to [[Sydney]], Australia, a voyage of several months that found the protected plants still in good condition upon arrival. Other plants made a return trip: a number of Australian native species that had never survived the transportation previously.<ref name=Atlantic2017/> The plants arrived in good shape after a stormy voyage around [[Cape Horn]]. One of Ward's correspondents was [[William Jackson Hooker]], later director of the [[Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew]]. Hooker's son [[Joseph Dalton Hooker]] was one of the first plant explorers to use the new Wardian cases, when he shipped live plants back to England from [[Aotearoa]]/New Zealand in 1841, during the pioneering voyage of [[HMS Erebus (1826)|HMS ''Erebus'']] that circumnavigated Antarctica. [[Image:Ward'scher Kasten.jpg|thumb|Another style of Wardian case]] Wardian cases soon became features of stylish [[drawing room]]s in Western Europe and the United States. In the polluted air of [[Victorian era|Victorian]] cities, the [[Pteridomania|fern craze]] and the [[Orchidelirium|craze]] for growing [[orchid]]s that followed owed much of their impetus to the new Wardian cases. More importantly, the Wardian case unleashed a revolution in the mobility of commercially important plants. In the 1840s, [[Robert Fortune]] used Wardian cases to ship 20,000 [[Camellia sinensis|tea plants]] to [[Presidencies and provinces of British India|British India]], smuggling them out of [[Shanghai]], China, to begin the [[Assam tea|tea plantations]] of [[Assam]]. In 1860, [[Clements Markham]] used Wardian cases to smuggle the [[cinchona]] plant out of South America.<ref name=Atlantic2017/> In the 1870s, after germination of imported [[hevea]] seeds in the heated glasshouses of Kew, seedlings of the [[Hevea brasiliensis|rubber tree]] of Brazil were shipped successfully in Wardian cases to Ceylon ([[Sri Lanka]]) and the new British territories in [[British Malaya|Malaya]] to start the rubber plantations. [[File:Wardian Case - Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam - July 2011.jpg|thumb|Wardian case - Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam - July 2011]] Wardian cases have thus been credited for helping break geographic [[Monopoly|monopolies]] in the production of important agricultural goods.<ref name=Atlantic2017/> Kew Gardens used Wardian cases to ship plants abroad up until 1962.<ref name=Atlantic2017/> The oldest surviving Wardian case is believed to be from circa 1880, discovered at [[Tregothnan]] in 1999.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}} Ward was always active in the [[Society of Apothecaries of London]], of which he became Master in 1854. Until very recently, 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]].
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