The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World, by Luke Keogh

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World by Luke Keogh Alyson J. Kiesel (bio) The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World, by Luke Keogh; pp. 265. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020, $35.00. Curator and historian Luke Keogh recovers the history and long afterlife of the Wardian case, a kind of portable greenhouse that allowed for the movement of living plants across the globe. In The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World, Keogh follows the case from its development in the early nineteenth century, to its widespread adoption by commercial nurseries and botanical gardens throughout the Victorian period, and through its final days of use in the 1960s. Throughout the study, Keogh focuses tightly on the case, its "biography," and its users; as such, the work will be of interest to scholars of material culture, horticulture, botany, natural history, environmental history, and the history of science (59). In addition, because the successful transportation and management of commodity crops like tea, coffee, cacao, cinchona (a source of quinine), and rubber was at the heart of European imperial projects, The Wardian Case also offers an unusual perspective on imperial expansion during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Possibilities," centers on the case's creator, the surgeon and amateur naturalist Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, as well as on other experiments in "plant boxes" that took place before and during Ward's time (5). Ward's idea for the case occurred in 1829 when he kept a moth pupa enclosed in a glass bottle so that he could observe it. During the moth's development, ferns sprouted in the soil Ward had included in the small habitat. Having struggled to propagate the very same ferns in his outdoor London rock gardens, Ward realized that plants could survive with minimal care while safely enclosed in glass. He began experimenting with glass cases that could [End Page 120] protect plants from the pollution of nineteenth-century London and, he hoped, could also provide a durable environment during journeys overseas that inevitably involved saltwater, high winds, and a fair amount of neglect. As Keogh demonstrates, the cases succeeded in protecting plants on such voyages, albeit imperfectly. In tracing some of these failures, Keogh records the disturbing shipboard proximity between plants collected for British profit and human beings captured and enslaved for the same purpose. For example, from 1836 to 1841, one of the botanist William Hooker's students, George Gardner, led a plant-hunting expedition in Brazil. For his return trip in 1841, he had his six Wardian cases installed on the deck of a slave ship named Gipsey. Keogh writes, "The Wardian cases sat on the ship deck gathering sunlight while men, women, and children were chained below deck. … Despite their privileged position on the deck, some of the plants were not doing well" (58). It is difficult to switch so quickly from the suffering of enslaved people, kidnapped and held captive in darkness, to the percentages of plants that arrived safely in Glasgow. That the archive seems to contain more detail about the latter is another jolt. Keogh mostly refrains from commenting on these gaps, but he does call attention to their presence. In describing an 1836–1837 plant-hunting expedition in Calcutta, Keogh notes that local guides, Ram Chund Maulee and Ramnarain Baugh, used their personal connections to help find plants, ensuring the success of the trip. And yet, by the time the expedition had returned to Calcutta, Maulee and Baugh had "deserted" without ever collecting their wages. It is, of course, profoundly unsatisfying to learn then that, "no details are available as to why"; but in sharing the mystery, Keogh at least points the way toward other potential inquiries (52). Threaded through Keogh's narrative of the case's early days is a sensitivity to the peculiarly sociable dynamics present in this pre-professional moment of Victorian science. The relationships among amateur naturalists like Ward, commercial nursery owners like George Loddiges, wealthy enthusiasts like William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, and prominent scientists like the...