Zhoushan Island
The species was brought from Japan (Dejima) to Europe by the German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold in 1830. The common name refers to Chusan Island (now Zhoushan Island), where Robert Fortune first saw cultivated specimens. In 1849, Fortune smuggled plants from China to the Kew Horticultural Gardens and the Royal garden of Prince Albert of the United Kingdom. It was later named "Trachycarpus fortunei", after him. It was first described by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in 1850 in his "Historia Naturalis Palmarum" but under the illegitimate name of "Chamaerops excelsa".