Scottish plant collector. Between 1843 and 1861 Robert Fortune made four important expeditions to collect seeds and plants from eastern China for the Royal Horticultural Society and the East India Company. He was especially asked to procure tea plants and to investigate its cultivation and processing; and it is Fortune's work that provided the basis for the tea industry in India.
Born in Kelloe, Berwickshire, Fortune embarked on a career as a gardener, proceeding from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to the London Horticultural Society's gardens at Chiswick. He had only recently been appointed superintendent of the hothouses there when he was selected to make his first exploratory visit to China for the Society. Learning Chinese and disguised as a native, he spent three years in the country, entering areas then closed to Europeans such as Soochow (Suzhou).
Surviving shipwreck, robbery and fevers, Fortune returned to England with a bounty of ornamental plants including the Japanese anemone (Anemone hupehensis (Lemoine) Lemoine var. japonica (Thunb.) Bowles & Stearn), Dicentra spectabilis Lem. and the fan palm, Trachycarpus fortunei (Hook.) H.Wendl. He also brought orchids and other plants from Java and Manila.
After a two-year interlude as curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, Fortune was back in China on behalf of the East India Company, tasked with his researches into tea. Arriving in 1848, within three years he had introduced thousands of tea plant seedlings to India. His next destinations were Taiwan and Japan, both of which he visited in 1853. From the latter he brought back the popular garden plants Kerria japonica (L.) DC. and Aucuba japonica Thunb. In 1857 he was again on the trail of tea in China, this time at the behest of the United States Patent Office. Fortune retired after a final trip in 1860, for a while busying himself with farming in Scotland as well as writing an account of his last foreign journey.
One of the first gardeners to be sent to China specifically to introduce useful and ornamental plants, Fortune published several books on his experiences: Three Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces in China (1847), A Journey to the Tea Districts of China (1852) and A Residence among the Chinese (1857). His final work was Yedo and Peking (1863), written after his retirement. A skilled botanist, Fortune was also responsible for building up a collection of herbarium material from the countries he visited. He died in 1880 at his home in South Kensington, leaving behind a wife, Jane.
Sources:
G.S. Boulger, rev. Elizabeth Baigent, 2010, "Fortune, Robert (1812-1880)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9953, accessed 31 August 2011
A.M. Coats, 1969, The Quest for Plants: 101-111
E.H.M. Cox, 1945, Plant Hunting in China: 75-92
R. Gardener, 1971, "Robert Fortune and the cultivation of tea in the United States", Arnoldia, 31: 1-18.
