Who was Robert Fortune?

Born in Berwickshire in Scotland in 1812, Robert Fortune was a Scottish botanist and plant collector. After leaving school Fortune worked as an apprentice gardener before joining the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1839. Three years later, in 1842, the Horticultural Society recruited him as Superintendent of the Hothouse Department for their garden in Chiswick.

In 1843 the Society dispatched Fortune to China. Britain had been at war with China from 1839 to 1842, in a conflict commonly known as the First Opium War. The Treaty of Nanking, signed between the two nations on 17 August 1842, brought an end to hostilities. The treaty gave Britain access to China’s northern ports. The Society sent Fortune to China to take advantage of this new opportunity to collect “ornamental or useful” plants, such as camellias, azaleas and chrysanthemums, that were not already in cultivation in Britain. He was also charged with obtaining information about Chinese gardening and agriculture.

Fortune returned from China in 1846, whereupon he took up the role of Curator at Chelsea Physic Garden. He returned to China several times, most notably in 1848 when the East India Company commissioned him to collect tea plants from China so that they could be introduced in India. Fortune wrote numerous books about his travels, including Three Years’ Wanderings in China, based on his experiences in China between 1843 and 1846. Fortune died in London in 1880.

Map of Fortune’s voyage. The place names given are those used by Fortune in his account.

Where did Robert Fortune go to collect plants?

Fortune travelled to the Chinese ports of Guangzhou and Macau, just as his predecessors John Potts and John Damper Parks had done twenty years earlier. Unlike Potts and Parks, he was also able to travel further north, from Hong Kong, to Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai.

Thomas Allom. City of Ningpo from the river, 1843. A depiction of Ningpo by another European visitor to the city, who travelled to Ningpo at around the same time as Fortune. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

How did Robert Fortune collect plant specimens?

Although he could travel more widely than his predecessors, Fortune was still unable to travel far from the Chinese ports he arrived at and so collected most of his specimens from local gardens and nurseries (including the famous Fa Tee nursery gardens) where they were already in cultivation. Much of his time was spent locating and trying to gain access to these places. He also paid local people to collect plants on his behalf from places he deemed too difficult or dangerous to reach.

At several points during his time in Asia, Fortune was assisted by indentured labourers in the transportation of his specimens. He does not name them in his papers, instead describing them using a pejorative term. Nor does he name the artist, or artists, he commissioned to paint portraits of plants (some of which plants he had never seen before, such as Paeonia suffruticosa) to send back to the Society.

Excerpt from a letter sent by Fortune to the Horticultural Society, listing Fortune’s expenses and indicating his use of indentured labour while in China. RHS/Col/8/2/1.

Fortune was one of the first to make use of Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward’s terrarium case to send living plants specimens back to England.

Illustration of a Wardian case, from Nathaniel Ward, On the growth of plants in closely glazed cases, 1852 (2nd edition)

What plants did Robert Fortune collect in China?

Given that Fortune had to confine his plant collecting to established gardens and nurseries, most of the plants he sent back to the Horticultural Society’s Chiswick Garden were garden varieties. They included the first forsythias to reach England, as well as Japanese anemones and winter-flowering jasmine.

Anemone japonica. Edward’s Botanical Register 31 (1845): “For its introduction to this country the public is indebted to the Horticultural Society, who received it from Mr. Fortune, in 1844.”

Azalea obtusa. Edward’s Botanical Register 32 (1846): “This remarkable species was sent to the Garden of the Horticultural Society by Mr. Fortune, July 26, 1844, as an Azalea, from Shanghae [Shanghai], with fine deep red flowers.”

What’s in the Robert Fortune papers at the RHS Lindley Library?

Although he wrote a journal of his travels at the request of the RHS, no such item survives. The papers in the collection comprise correspondence and papers of the Horticultural Society relating to Fortune’s expedition, and letters exchanged between Fortune and the Society.

This Insight draws upon research carried out by Dr Sarah Easterby-Smith and Dr Elena Romero-Passerin (University of St Andrews) in 2021-2022, commissioned by the RHS.

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RHS/Col/8 Papers of Robert Fortune