Robert Fortune
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Robert Fortune (September 16, 1812 - April 13, 1880), was a Scottish botanist and traveller best known for introducing tea plants from China to India.
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[edit] 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 Horticultural Society of London's garden at Chiswick, and following the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 was sent out by the Society to collect plants in China.
His travels resulted in the introduction to Europe of many new, exotic and beautiful flowers. His most famous accomplishment was successfully transportation of tea from China to India in 1848 on behalf of the British East India Company.
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 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. [1]
Apart from his many contributions to botanical history, Fortune was the first European to discover that so-called black tea and green tea were actually from the same plant.
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 books. He died in London in 1880.
[edit] 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
[edit] 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
[edit] Other introductions by Fortune
[edit] External links
- Robert Fortune (1812-1880) - (PlantExplorers.com)
- Dreijährige Wanderungen in den Nord-Provinzen von China (online version of German edition)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 82-3; E.M. Cox, Plant-hunting in China: A History of Botanical Exploration in China and the Tibetan Marches (London: Scientific Book Guild, 1945), p. 89.
- ^ Brummitt RK; Powell CE. (1992). Authors of Plant Names. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ISBN 1-84246-085-4.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
