News / ss Great Britain
Steamships, ferns and custard creams
If you know your Bristol history, you will already know the links that our city has to Ribena and chocolate bars.
Now there is another foodstuff that can trace its origins – albeit circuitously – back to Bristol: the custard cream biscuit.
Take a good look at a custard cream and you will notice a fern design, stemming from the Victorian craze for ferns known as pteridomania.
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A delicious selection of custard creams – photo: Martin Booth
But what has this got to do with Bristol?
Well, it was on steamships like the SS Great Britain that many of the plants that we know and love today were transported between continents for the first time.
Newly installed on the weather deck of the SS Great Britain are three wooden cases each full of different plants and flowers, with three more due to arrive with more clement weather.
The cases are known as Wardian cases; mini glass houses that in 1833 were adapted to transport living plants on the decks of ships across the oceans.
By enabling the global migration of plants, the SS Great Britain connected botanists, entrepreneurs and ‘plant hunters’ worldwide; as well as inspiring the design of a particularly delicious biscuit.
Living plants have returned to the SS Great Britain for the first time in 150 years – photo: Martin Booth
Volunteers from Redcatch Community Garden in Knowle helped finish one of the six Wardian cases containing ornamental plants, with multi award-winning garden designer Jane Porter putting together the ferns.
The other case currently on display contains plants for food including fruit trees, with botanicals, orchids and invasive plant species all coming soon.
For more information about living plants on board the SS Great Britain, visit www.ssgreatbritain.org/living-plants-aboard-the-ss-great-britain
Main photo: Martin Booth
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