Article

Ferns

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Ferns

Ferns constitute a species-rich and ecologically conspicuous component of the wet tropical forests of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, where they form dense thickets on forest edges, climb in abundance through the understorey, and colonise sea-coast cliffs, damp ravines, and the uppermost boughs of emergent trees [1, pp. 2–4]. Their economic and cultural significance extends from the use of Cibotium Barometz hairs as a styptic exported to Europe, to the twisting of Lygodium vines into decorative ropes, to the consumption of several species as potherbs [1, pp. 5–6]. The botanical literature of the Straits Settlements and Sarawak, spanning from the 1890s through the 1920s, documents a progressive mapping of this flora from the well-known lowland settlements into the remote interior highlands, revealing a region of considerable endemism and elevational diversity.

Floristic Scope and Taxonomic Framework

The foundational checklist for the region was published by H. N. Ridley, Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, in 1908, recording 382 fern species from the Malay Peninsula [1, p. 1]. Ridley organised the list following the taxonomic arrangement of Beddome’s Ferns of British India, synthesising collections from Scortechini, Day, Kunstler, Hullett, Bishop Hose, Curtis, and earlier collectors including Wallich and Cuming [1, p. 1]. He was explicit that the number “will be very largely increased by further discoveries,” identifying the northern states bordering Siam and the east coast lowlands as areas “hardly investigated at all” [1, p. 1].

Approximately forty species in Ridley’s list were identified as endemic to the Peninsula, never collected elsewhere; these include Gleichenia Norrisii, Alsophila Ridleyi, Alsophila Kingii, Aspidium Kunstleri, Aspidium tricuspe, Lastrea Ridleyi, Nephrodium Ridleyi, Pleopeltis Wrayi, and Trichomanes malaccense [1, pp. 5]. Six species—Trichomanes radicans, Hymenophyllum Tunbridgense, Pteris aquilina, Lastrea Thelypteris, Polystichum aculeatum, and Adiantum Capillus-veneris—also occur in the British Isles, illustrating what Ridley regarded as the extraordinary cosmopolitan distribution of fern spores [1, p. 5].

Ridley’s 1919 companion volume extended the treatment to the fern-allies and Characeae, providing systematic accounts of the Lycopodiaceae, Selaginellaceae, Rhizocarpeae, and Characeae based on his own field collections and examination of type specimens at Kew, the British Museum, and the Linnean Society [2, pp. 139–164]. The Lycopodiaceae section covered thirteen species of Lycopodium and two of Psilotum, none of which was endemic to the Peninsula; Ridley attributed their wide tropical or circumglobal ranges to the dust-like nature of their spores and the great antiquity of the group [2, pp. 139–140]. The Selaginella section, by contrast, constituted the paper’s most significant contribution: of thirty-two species recorded, twenty-one were classified as endemic to the Malay Peninsula, a proportion Ridley interpreted as evidence that the smaller, less widely dispersible spores of this genus had permitted greater in-situ speciation [2, p. 140]. He described several new species from his own collections, including S. cuprea, S. illustris, S. reptans, S. scabrida, and S. montana, and offered taxonomic corrections to earlier determinations by Baker and Beddome [2, pp. 152–153].

Ecological Dynamics and Elevational Gradients

Ridley’s ecological observations, interspersed throughout his 1908 checklist, establish a clear pattern of elevational zonation. The richest localities are wet, densely forested hills between 1,000 and 5,000 feet, while drier woods are characterised by Schizaea, Lindsaya, and Nephrodium species; at high elevations, thin-textured ferns are replaced by more coriaceous, xerophytic forms such as Dipteris, Matonia, and Oleandra [1, pp. 3–4]. Gleichenia linearis (resam) covers vast tracts of forest edge and burnt ground in dense, impenetrable thickets, while Pteris aquilina is described as “probably the most widely distributed and abundant of any vascular plant in the world” [1, pp. 2–3]. Dipteris Horsfieldii forms close masses on sea-coast cliffs and clay banks above 2,000 feet [1, p. 3].

The 1911 Batu Lawi expedition, in which E. B. Copeland served as botanical collector, provided the first systematic fern collections from the upper Limbang and Madihit valleys of Sarawak, an area of considerable elevational range from sea level to over 5,000 feet [3, pp. 71–72]. The expedition’s collecting was severely constrained: of the forty days from Limbang to Claudetown, thirty-one were spent in actual travelling, with only five occasions on which the party slept two consecutive nights in the same place [3, p. 56]. The Madihit district was so sparsely populated that the party spent thirteen days between Penribut’s house and Batu Lawi without encountering any native habitation [3, p. 56]. Despite these limitations, the collection yielded several species new to science or new to the known range of Sarawak [3, pp. 71–72].

Curtis’s 1894 catalogue of Penang Island documented the ecological problem of secondary succession in relation to ferns and other pioneer species. He observed that once forests were felled and burnt, the original Dipterocarp and Sterculia canopy was never re-established on cleared land; instead, pioneer species such as Imperata arundinacea (lalang), Gleichenia spp. (resam), Rhodomyrtus tomentosa, Eurya acuminata, and Trema amboinense took permanent possession, rendering the land botanically uninteresting for a long period [4, pp. 67–163]. He noted that the present site of the Botanic Garden, once planted with cloves and nutmegs, had reverted to dense secondary jungle indistinguishable from the surrounding uncleared hills, yet showed no trace of the large Dipterocarp species that still dominated the adjacent summits [4, pp. 67–163].

Ethnobotanical Uses and Economic Significance

Ridley devoted a notable section of his 1908 checklist to the ethnobotanical significance of several species [1, pp. 5–6]. Stenochloena palustris (lamiding) and Anisogonium esculentum (paku anjing) are eaten as potherbs. The fronds of Pleopeltis Phymatodes, when dry, exhale a coumarin odour and are placed among clothes as a perfume. The golden hairs of Cibotium Barometz are sold as a styptic under the name Penawar Jambi and even exported to Europe. The ashes of Drynaria quercifolia are applied to the abdomen in cases of miscarriage [1, pp. 5–6]. Lygodium species (ribu-ribu) are so abundant climbing over bushes that they are twisted into ropes for ballroom decoration [1, pp. 2–3].

Among the fern-allies, Selaginella laevigata forms thickets of climbers often exceeding thirty feet in length, is common throughout open country and forest edges, and is known locally as Paku Salumah, Paku Lumut, and Paku Tanjong [2, p. 155]. Lecanopteres carnosa and Pleopeltis sinuosa possess rhizomes modified into ant nests, analogous to the rubiaceous Myrmecodia; Ridley noted the paradox that P. sinuosa, despite its thick succulent rhizome, is among the first epiphytes to die during a short dry spell [1, p. 4].

Administrative and Institutional Context

The documentation of the region’s fern flora was inseparable from the colonial administrative and scientific infrastructure of the Straits Settlements and Sarawak. Curtis, who compiled the Penang catalogue, held the post of Assistant Superintendent of Forests, and his work reflects the dual botanical-forestry concerns of the Straits Settlements service, with particular emphasis on timber species and their local names [4, pp. 67–163]. Ridley, as Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, operated from the region’s principal centre of botanical research, and his checklists drew on the collaborative efforts of multiple collectors and institutions [1, p. 1]. He acknowledged Dr. Christ of Basle for species identifications and Surgeon General C. T. Matthew, who used his ship’s short port stays in Singapore to collect ferns in the local forests, underscoring the multi-institutional nature of colonial-era botanical work [1, p. 1].

The historical appendix to Curtis’s catalogue, appended under the initials H. N. R., reconstructs the history of botanical collecting in Penang from Wallich’s 1822 visit through Maingay’s collections of the 1860s, documenting the destruction of Jack’s drawings and manuscripts when the ship Fame was burnt at sea and identifying numerous mislocalisations in the Flora of British India where plants collected in Singapore, Sumatra, or the further islands were erroneously attributed to Penang [4, pp. 67–163].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s journal literature on ferns reveals a clear progression from localised floristic inventories to regional syntheses, and from purely taxonomic listing to ecological and ethnobotanical interpretation. Curtis’s 1894 Penang catalogue, compiled over approximately seven years of field collection, established the first systematic floristic inventory of a Straits Settlement, though he explicitly acknowledged its incompleteness, noting that many plants whose distribution is so general across the Malay Islands that their Penang occurrence is not mentioned in the reference works he had access to have certainly been collected there but are omitted if he had not seen them himself [4, pp. 67–163].

Ridley’s 1908 checklist represented a decisive shift in scale, synthesising the work of multiple collectors across the entire Peninsula into a single taxonomic framework of 382 species [1, pp. 1–59]. His 1919 treatment of the fern-allies and Characeae extended this synthesis to the allied groups, introducing the comparative biogeographical argument on endemism that would become a recurring theme in subsequent regional floristics [2, pp. 139–164]. The Batu Lawi expedition of 1911, with Copeland’s brief but significant fern appendix, marked the extension of systematic collecting into the previously uninvestigated interior highlands of Sarawak, the first European party to reach the vicinity of Mount Batu Lawi since Sir Spenser St. John’s 1858 journey [3, pp. 71–72]. Burkill’s 1923 notice, providing additions to Ridley’s list from northern Sumatra, indicates that the checklist remained a living document, revised as new collections from adjacent regions clarified the distributional boundaries of peninsular species [5, pp. 114–115].

The literature also reflects the practical constraints of colonial-era fieldwork: the hurried character of expeditions, the difficulty of terrain, the prevalence of fever among native carriers in cold mountain conditions, and the limited time available for botanical collecting all shaped the scope and completeness of the records [3, pp. 56–57]. Ridley’s repeated emphasis on unexplored areas—the northern states, the east coast lowlands, the interior highlands—serves as a reminder that the 382-species figure of 1908 was a lower bound, and that the true diversity of the region’s fern flora remained substantially undocumented at the close of the period covered by these records.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. H.N. Ridley (1908). A list of the ferns of the Malay Peninsula JSBRAS 50: 1–59.
  2. H.N. Ridley (1919). The fern-allies and Characeae of the Malay Peninsula JSBRAS 80: 139–164. Read on JSTOR
  3. E.B. Copeland (1912). The ferns of the Batu Lawi expedition JSBRAS 63: 71–72.
  4. C. Curtis (1894). A catalogue of the flowering plants and ferns found growing wild in the Island of Penang JSBRAS 25: 67–163.
  5. I.H. Burkill (1923). A record of the occurrence of some ferns in northern Sumatra, being additions to Mr. Ridley’s list JMBRAS 1(1): 114–115. Read on JSTOR