Species Ritchiea brachypoda

For Joseph Ritchie (1792–1819), English surgeon, explorer and naturalist. In 1818, he and George Francis Lyon (1795–1832), a naval officer who had explored in both the Arctic and Africa, were sent by Sir John Barrow (1764–1848), second secretary of the admiralty, to find the course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu. Barrow decided they should depart from Tripoli and cross the Sahara as part of their journey. The expedition was underfunded, poorly supplied, and burdened with ill-selected merchandise that proved unsalable. After long delays, due to officialdom, the expedition reached Tripoli in March 1819, and 39 days later, Murzuk in Libya bordering on the Murzuk Desert. There they both fell ill, and Ritchie died.