Robert Fortune was a Scottish botanist and plant collector, born in 1812, who became renowned for introducing roughly 250 ornamental plant species from Asia into Western gardens and for his role in transplanting the Chinese tea industry into British India. Traveling through China from 1843 to 1861 on behalf of the British East India Company, he often disguised himself as a Chinese merchant in order to travel beyond the treaty ports where Europeans were normally restricted. In 1848 he organized the transport of tea plants, seeds and experienced Chinese tea workers from China to British plantations in northwestern India, and although most of the specific Chinese plants and methods he introduced did not ultimately take hold there, since British consumers came to prefer the darker brew produced by local Assam tea varieties, the expertise and plant material he brought back helped lay the groundwork for the tea industries that later flourished in Assam and Ceylon.
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