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4 unusual facts about Nikolay Rumyantsev


Carl Benedict Hase

Hase likely forged a work later known as the Fragments of Toparcha Gothicus and passed them off as real to one of his patrons, Nikolay Rumyantsev, causing a period of confusion among Byzantine scholars over the origin of this work.

Nikolay Rumyantsev

As a result, his name came to be attached to such exotic things as Spiranthes romanzoffiana, a North American orchid, Papilio rumanzovia, a large butterfly from the Philippines, and was, between 1812 and 1842 the Russian name (залив Румянцева) for present day Bodega Bay, California.

Russian colonization of the Americas

Count Nikolay Rumyantsev funded Russia's first naval circumnavigation under the joint command of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Nikolai Rezanov in 1803–1806, and was instrumental in the outfitting of the voyage of the Riurik's circumnavigation of 1814–1816, which provided substantial scientific information on Alaska's and California's flora and fauna, and important ethnographic information on Alaskan and Californian (among others) natives.

Spiranthes romanzoffiana

Collected by Chamisso during the Romanzov expedition it was described by him in 1828 and named for Count Nikolay Rumyantsev who financed it.



see also