When Keith Richards encountered a library plant, only one of them walked away. The Rolling Stone has been blamed for killing an orchid at a library in New York, sending it to its death with a few puffs of cigarette smoke.

The orchid, a Phalaenopsis amabilis, resided at the main branch of the New York Public Library, where Richards spoke on 29 October. The guitarist had been given a tour of the premises, finishing with an invitation to sit "backstage", in the office of Marie d'Origny, deputy director of the library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. When D'Origny returned a little while later, Richards was smoking a cigarette, the office window open, and according to the library's blog, "between the cold and the smoke, the little orchid never stood a chance".

It took four days for the orchid's 12 white flowers to tumble from the stem, the New York Daily News reports. But there was no rescuing it. RIP Phalaenopsis amabilis. Luckily for the library workers, Richards was "very much a gentleman", according to D'Origny, and not at all "the devilish rock star". As if sensing his influence on the orchid, Richards even autographed the clay saucer it was sitting in, which he had used as an ashtray. "He extinguished the cigarette in the sign of the cross and signed it, 'Thanks, Keith Richards, 2010,'" D'Origny said.

Richards was at the library to read from his new memoir, titled, er, Life.