The Wardian Case in Western Australia

Reflecting on the notion of “Collecting the West” the role of Western Australia’s collections is an important part of the Wardian case story. The Wardian case is a rare object to find in museum collections. Around the world there are only thirteen actual Wardian cases in museum collections. In the late nineteenth century there were likely tens of thousands of cases in use, yet today there are so few cases found in collections. Imagine if the global container shipping industry was no more and there were only thirteen shipping containers left in museum collections. Of the rare Wardian cases, there are ones in well-known collections such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, but there are also cases in small regional locations.

Western Australia has its very own Wardian case.

The case is held in the collection of the Waroona Historical Society – it is one of their most significant collection items. It was only recently discovered in regional Western Australia and for much of its life it was used as a dog kennel. It is believed that the case is from the 1930s and was used in the national nursery trade that operated throughout Australia. Today, after much work by the historical society, the case has been conserved with a new display case made for it and a significance assessment completed on it. It is poignant that there is a case in Western Australia as the story of the Wardian case is intimately connected to the state’s history.

What is a Wardian Case?

In 1829 the London doctor and amateur naturalist Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward placed the chrysalis of a moth, soil and dried leaves inside a glass bottle and screwed the cap on tight and placed it on the windowsill. He was waiting to see the moth hatch. As he waited and watched something else sprouted inside the bottle—a fern and meadow grass. The moth hatched and was let go. But it was the plants that grew inside the bottle that captured Ward’s attention.

A keen naturalist, Ward had tried for many years to get the fern to grow in his London garden but the polluted city air that surrounded his Welclose Square home prevented it. Inside the bottle, however, the fern thrived.

Ward had discovered a new method to keep his plants alive. Under glass, so long as there was sunlight and moisture inside the case, plants could survive in this micro-environment for long periods. Ward suggested they could survive as long as eight months without watering. The Wardian case was discovered. Over the coming years Ward experimented further with plants under glass.

The wider implications of Ward’s invention were for the long-distance transport of live plants. For much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century transporting plants between countries amounted to a great challenge. In 1819 John Livingstone, a keen botanist and surgeon posted to Macao for the East India Company, estimated that only one in a thousand plants survived the journey from China to Britain.

In 1833 Nathaniel Ward tested his invention by transporting two travelling style cases on the longest journey then known – to Australia. The plants survived the six-month journey to Sydney. The cases were repacked and sent back to Ward in London. Again, they survived. When Ward and his friend and George Loddiges, a well-known nursery owner, went aboard the ship in London to inspect the plants, he wrote: “I shall not readily forget the delight expressed by Mr G. Loddiges, who accompanied me on board, at the beautiful appearance of the fronds of Gleichenia microphylla, a plant now for the first time seen alive in this country.” The experiment was a success.

The New Colony and Kew’s First Case

The well-known Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, used the Wardian case extensively to move plants, particularly for their plant hunters and for sending plants to their network of botanical gardens in the colonies. In return many of their cases were returned with unique foreign plants that botanists at Kew would name and describe in their publications. But few people know that the first Wardian cases sent by Kew Gardens were to Western Australia.

Since the late eighteenth century Kew Gardens’ has always been held in high regard. But there was a period in the 1830s when it was rapidly declining. And it was at this time, when it faced heavy scrutiny, that the head gardener William Aiton sent a package of plants to Western Australia. On 1 May 1838 the first Wardian cases were sent from Kew. Four glazed cases, following Ward’s method, were sent to the “new colony” of Western Australia. They contained 84 plants made up of everything from apples to cherries, gooseberry to quince, balsam to red cedar, and ash to oak.

The Wardian case became the primary means for transplanting live plants. It was used for over a century by nurseries, botanical gardens, plant explorers and agriculturalists. The most famous plants that were moved in Wardian cases are successful economic plants such as the Cavendish banana, cinchona, coffee, tea, rubber and many more. Successfully sending live plants around the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in Wardian cases helped to transform our global environment. Not only increasing the number and variety of plants that could be moved, but also unleashing a whole range of other ecological impacts that are still with us today.

By Luke Keogh, Deakin University. To read the full story see Keogh’s The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World (Chicago, 2020).