The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World

Environmental historian Keogh charts the history of the Wardian case, a traveling greenhouse, in his fascinating debut. He begins in 1829, when Nathaniel Ward, a doctor and amateur naturalist, placed the pupa of a sphinx moth inside a glass bottle with some soil and dried leaves. At the end of his experiment, the moth had hatched and a fern had sprouted, while meadow grass had grown out of the soil. By accident, Ward had discovered that plants encased in glass can manage without water for long periods. His invention soon became “the most common way to move live plants,” a powerful tool in an era of expanding empires and global commerce. European powers used the Wardian case to ship tea, rubber, banana, and cinchona (source of the anti-malarial quinine) plants to or from their overseas colonies. Even after Ward’s death in 1868, and up until the 1960s, when the cases were supplanted by air transport, his discovery influenced botany as well as ecology, since the soil in the cases generally included insects, thus sometimes inadvertently introducing invasive species to new ecosystems. “The balance of nature never performs to our human wishes,” Keogh concludes. Any gardener fascinated by history will find this well-told story fruitful. (Aug.)