Count Nikolay Rumyantsev

Today is the birthday of a man who was the foreign minister of Russia, Count Nikolay Rumyantsev.
In 1815, he funded the round the world scientific voyage of the Rurik which included the poet and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso ("Sha-ME-So") and a doctor/surgeon named Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz.
Two years later, in 1817, the Rurik ended up in the San Francisco Bay area where it planned to reprovision.
During their stay in San Francisco, Chamiso discovered the California poppy, which he named Eschscholzia californica after his friend Johanns Friedrich Von Eschscholzia.
In 1903, the botanist Sarah Plummer Lemmon put forth a successful piece of legislation that nominated the golden poppy (Eschscholzia californica) as the state flower of California.
And here’s what the botanist Alice Eastwood once said about the poppy:

“The Eschscholzia so glows with the sunbeams caught in its chalice that it diffuses light upon the other flowers and the grass. This poppy will not shine unless the sunbeams on it, but folds itself up and goes to sleep.”