The term ‘Pteridomania' (or Fern fever) was first coined by historian, and author of the The Water-Babies, Charles Kingsley in his 1855 book Glaucus. Pteridomania swept across Victorian Britain and saw fern hunters crossing the country seeking interesting plants for their collections. Of the 350 known species of Trichomanes, T.speciosum is the only one native to the British Isles.This plant, commonly known as the Killarney Fern,was once thought close to extinction due to the over collection by Victorian fern collectors. A fern has two different stages, gametophyte (sexual stage) and the spore producing stage called sporophyte. T. speciosum is unique amongst the European ferns in that each stage (or generation) can live independently of the other. The ferns can reproduce vegetatively by means of asexual propagules or by rhizome spread in the case of the sporophyte.