Overview
Te Papa has several copies of the so-called “blue books” of New Zealand ferns. These were produced by Herbert Dobbie and Eric Craig in the late nineteenth century. They were made by a process akin to blueprinting, described by Dobbie himself as “a simple form of photography or nature printing”. A fern specimen was placed on chemically treated paper, which was then exposed to light for a set period of time. The paper was then washed in water which caused the exposed paper to turn blue while the paper under the fern remained white.
Five versions were produced. Few copies now remain, and some versions are exceedingly rare. Te Papa has single copies of versions B, C, D, and E. For more information on the blue books, including how they were made, see McCraw (1989, New Zealand Journal of Botany 27: 347-351).
Dobbie went on to author several books on New Zealand ferns, containing text descriptions and illustrated by photographs. There are very few fern specimens collected and/or identified by Dobbie in New Zealand’s herbarium collections. Dobbie's books, and particularly their images, are therefore the principal means of authenticating the identifications and names that he, as the New Zealand expert of that period, used for New Zealand ferns. The blue books are an important early window into Dobbie's understanding and interpretation of New Zealand fern taxonomy and diversity. They are also striking representations of New Zealand’s ferns.
The images are titled with the scientific names used by Dobbie. However, many of these are now out of date and/or misapplied, so the current scientific name of the fern depicted is also linked to each image.