The Plant Thief: Sir John Richardson

June 5, 1865

On this day, the Scottish explorer and botanist Sir John Richardson died.

During his very active life, he participated in the unsuccessful search for his friend Sir John Franklin, who disappeared while searching for the North West Passage.

When researching Sir John Richardson, I learned that on the last day of May 1865, just days before he died, Sir John and his family visited some old friends. 

There was a standing joke that Sir John,

"never left a garden empty-handed, and that evening he carried off a plant of Forget-me-not".

When he returned home, Sir John found a place for the little blue flower in his favorite border.

After his death, Sir John was buried at Grasmere cemetery near William Wordsworth.

One of the verses of Scripture written on his tombstone is from the twenty-seventh Psalm.

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

During times of great duress on his expeditions with friend and fellow explorer John Franklin - when they were starving, facing certain death, and too weak to hold a bible in their hands - Sir John and Franklin had recited the twenty-seventh Psalm to each other. It strengthened them, and the verse became Sir John's favorite.