About this item
- Title
- Wearing the silver fern
- Content partner
- Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage
- Collection
- Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
- Description
The silver fern (a species of tree fern, Cyathea dealbata) has been an important, though unofficial, national emblem since it was first worn by players in the 1888 New Zealand Natives rugby team which toured Britain. It has been used mostly as a badge by representative sporting teams and on military uniforms and graves, but also became a trademark for meat and dairy exports. Softball outfielder Kim Dermott, an Olympic representative in 2000, started a trend by getting a tattoo of the emblem.
- Format
- Image
- Date created
- 3 March 2009
- Creator
- Paul Estcourt
- Contributing partner
- New Zealand Herald
- URL
- https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/2579/wearing-the-silver-fern
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Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage has this to say about the rights status of this item:
http://www.teara.govt.nz/copyright, Crown Copyright administered through the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga. All text licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence unless otherwise stated. Commercial re-use may be allowed on request. All non-text content is subject to specific conditions. New Zealand Herald Reference: 6 September 2000 by Paul Estcourt Permission of the New Zealand Herald must be obtained before any re-use of this image.
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What can I do with this item?
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Report this itemDigitalNZ brings together more than 30 million items from institutions so that they are easy to find and use. This information is the best information we could find on this item. This item was added on 29 April 2013, and updated 28 November 2025.
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