Robert Fortune.

Travels and botanical introductions to Europe

Fortune was born in Kelloe, Berwickshire. He was employed in the botanical garden in Edinburgh, and later in the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Chiswick, and following the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 was sent out by the Society to collect plants in China.

His travels resulted in the introduction to Europe of many new and exotic beautiful flowers. His most famous accomplishment was successfully smuggling tea into India from China in 1848 on behalf of the British East India Company. He disguised himself as a Manchu courtier of the Imperial Palace, embarking on an endeavour which carried the death penalty by decapitation for tea smuggling. The target of Fortune was the famed silver-tipped tea, favourite of the Song-era Emperor Huizong (who ironically by legend lost his empire due to his obsession with brewing the perfect cup of tea) from Drum Mountain's White Cloud Monastery in Northern Fujian Province, China. The teas were smuggled aboard a Chinese junk the East India Company had specially purchased, using Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward's portable Wardian cases to sustain the plants. Fortune introduced 20,000 tea plants to the Darjeeling region of India, after having been grafted and propagated in the Royal Horticultural Society's London greenhouses.

His three-year tea smuggling journey totally destroyed the Chinese tea monopoly forever and its tea trade reliant economy.

Fortune's plants enabled creation of superior managed tea industries of India and Ceylon, and ended China's natural monopoly of tea. He was the first European to discover that varieties of teas such as black tea and green tea were produced from the same plant.

Chinese tea workers, facing likely death sentences, assisted Fortune and traveled to Darjeeling to pass on their skills and knowledge.^[1]

In subsequent journeys he visited Formosa and Japan, and described the culture of the silkworm and the manufacture of rice. He introduced many trees, shrubs and flowers to the West, including the cumquat, a climbing double yellow rose ('Fortune's Double Yellow' (syn. Gold of Ophir) which proved a failure in England's climate) and many varieties of tree peonies, azaleas and chrysanthemums. A climbing white rose that he brought back from China in 1850, believed to be a natural cross between Rosa laevigata and R. banksiae, was dubbed R. fortuniana (syn. R. fortuneana) in his honor. This rose, too, proved a failure in England, though it serves as a valuable rootstock in Australia and the southern regions of the United States.

The incidents of his travels were related in a succession of interesting books. He died in London in 1880.

Publications

• Three Years' Wandering in the Northern Provinces of China, A Visit to the Tea, Silk, and Cotton Countries, with an account of the Agriculture and Horticulture of the Chinese, New Plants, etc. London, John Murray, 1847
• A Journey to the Tea Countries of China; Sung-lo and the Bohea Hills; with a Short Notice of the East India Company's Tea Plantations in the Himalaya Mountains. London, John Murray, 1852
• Two visits to the tea countries of China and the British tea plantations in the Himalaya. 1853, National Library: CAT10983833 LCCN: 04-32957
• A Residence Among the Chinese; Inland, On the Coast and at Sea; being a Narrative of Scenes and Adventures During a Third Visit to China from 1853 to 1856, including Notices of Many Natural Productions and Works of Art, the Culture of Silk, &c. London, John Murray, 1857
• Yedo and Peking; A Narrative of a Journey to the Capitals of Japan and China, with Notices of the Natural Productions, Agriculture, Horticulture and Trade of those Countries and Other Things Met with By the Way. London, John Murray, 1863

• Fortune, Robert (1853). Two visits to the tea countries of China and the British tea plantations in the Himalaya: with a narrative of adventures, and a full description of the culture of the tea plant, the agriculture, horticulture, and botany of China (Vol.1) London: Murray. -University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives, China Through Western Eyes

• Fortune, Robert (1853). Two visits to the tea countries of China and the British tea plantations in the Himalaya: with a narrative of adventures, and a full description of the culture of the tea plant, the agriculture, horticulture, and botany of China (Vol.2) London: Murray. -University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives, China Through Western Eyes

Plants named after Robert Fortune

• Arundinaria fortunei
• Cyrtomium fortunei
• Euonymus fortunei
• Hosta fortunei
• Keteleeria fortunei
• Mahonia fortunei
• Maxburretia fortunei
• Osmanthus fortunei
• Pleioblastus fortunei
• Rhododendron fortunei
• Rosa fortuniana
• Trachycarpus fortunei

Other introductions by Fortune

• Jasminum nudiflorum
• Dicentra spectabilis
• Forsythia viridissima

External links

• Robert Fortune (1812-1880) - (PlantExplorers.com)
• ''Dreijährige Wanderungen in den Nord-Provinzen von China'' (online version of German edition)

Notes

1. ↑ Imperial Co-histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press, William S. Haney, Julie F. Codell, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 2003 ISBN 0838639739, pp 153-154

References

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