Robert Fortune

Robert Fortune
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Robert Fortune (16 September 1812 – 13 April 1880)[1][2] was a Scottish botanist, plant hunter and traveller, best known for introducing tea plants from China to India.

Travels and botanical introductions to Europe

Fortune was born at Kelloe, Berwickshire, Scotland. He was employed in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and later in the Horticultural Society of London's garden at Chiswick. As a result of his mission success, the British gained a large profit and they were able to manufacture tea throughout the world.[3]

Following the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, Fortune was sent out by the Horticultural Society to collect plants in China.

His travels resulted in the introduction to Europe of many new, exotic, beautiful flowers and plants. His most famous accomplishment was the successful transportation of tea from China to India in 1848 on behalf of the British East India Company.[4] In total, Fortune stayed in China for about two and a half years, from 1848 to 1851. Similar to other European travellers of the period, such as Walter Medhurst, Fortune disguised himself as a Chinese merchant during several, but not all, of his journeys beyond the newly established treaty port areas. Not only was Fortune's purchase of tea plants forbidden by the Chinese government of the time, but his travels were also beyond the allowable day's journey from the European treaty ports. Fortune travelled to some areas of China that had seldom been visited by Europeans, including remote areas of Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangsu provinces.

Fortune employed many different means to transport tea plants, seedlings, and other botanical discoveries, but he is most well known for his use of Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward's portable Wardian cases to sustain the plants. Using these small greenhouses, Fortune introduced 20,000 tea plants and seedlings to the Darjeeling region of India. He also brought with him a group of trained Chinese tea workers who would facilitate the production of tea leaves. With the exception of a few plants which survived in established Indian gardens, most of the Chinese tea plants Fortune introduced to India perished. The technology and knowledge that was brought over from China, however, may have been instrumental in the later flourishing of the Indian tea industry.[5] [6]

In subsequent journeys he visited Formosa (modern day Taiwan) 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, preferring warmer climates. Today both of these roses are still widely grown by antique rose fanciers in mild winter regions. R. fortuniana also 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 books. He died in London in 1880, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery.

Publications

Books about Robert Fortune

Non-fiction

Rose, Sarah (2008). (For) All The Tea in China. 

Fiction

Sheridan, Sara (2009). The Secret Mandarin. 

Chun, Pam The Perfect Tea Thief (2014) [8]

Plants named after Robert Fortune

Introductions by Robert Fortune

Barnaby Miln, a descendant of Robert Fortune, prepared this list in 1997 with help from the Horticultural Department of the National Trust for Scotland, in advance of Christian Aid Scotland's The Robert Fortune Show Garden at the Royal Horticultural Society Show on 30 May – 1 June 1997, which he designed. The show garden won a Royal Horticultural Society’s Silver Gilt Medal (Flora Range), the highest awarded at that show. Several television gardening programmes were broadcast from the Show Garden together with a BBC Songs of Praise in which HRH The Princess Royal was shown the garden by Barnaby Miln.

Notes

  1. ↑  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fortune, Robert". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  2. ↑ "Ten Things…You Never Knew About The Scottish." Britain 79.5 (2011): 98. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
  3. ↑ Schneider, Howard. "For All The Tea In China: How England Stole The World's Favorite Drink And Changed History." Humanist 70.6 (2010): 42-47. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
  4. ↑ "Indian History Sourcebook: England, India, and The East Indies, 1617 CE". Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  5. ↑ Fan, Fa-ti (2004), British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 82–3.
  6. ↑ Cox, EM (1945), Plant-hunting in China: A History of Botanical Exploration in China and the Tibetan Marches, London: Scientific Book Guild, p. 89.
  7. ↑ IPNI.  Fortune.
  8. ↑ http://www.pamchun.com/the_perfect_tea_thief_123811.htm/
  9. ↑ Bretschneider, Emil (1935), History of European botanical discoveries in China, Leipzig: KF Koehlers antiquarium.
  10. ↑ Richard Gorer, born 1913, horticultural writer
  11. ↑ National Trust for Scotland, D Donald, Head of Horticulture in 1997

References

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