A climbing shrub, up to 30 or 40 ft high, introduced from China by Fortune about 1845. It has much the general character of the Banksian rose, having three or five leaflets to each leaf, glabrous and simply toothed. It is most probably a hybrid between that species and R. laevigata. The flowers are white and double as in typical R. banksiae, but larger, and with the bristly stalk and receptacle of R. laevigata, whose influence is further shown in the flowers being solitary, and in the large leaflets, which are downy only at the base of the midrib. It is a handsome and vigorous climber which thrives on sheltered sunny walls near London, but does not flower very freely.
R. × fortuniana was described in Paxton’s Flower Garden, Vol. 2 (1851), p. 71. In the next volume of the same work the same name was used again, obviously owing to an editorial error, for ‘Fortune’s Double Yellow’, for which see under R. × odorata, p. 77.