The genus Thottea Rottb. (Aristolochiaceae) is a link between the early years of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and tropical plant collections. This engraving of Thottea grandiflora Rottb. accompanied the description of the genus published by Rottböll (1783), based on a specimen collected in 1779 in Malacca by J.G. Koenig and still kept in the Natural History Mu seum of Denmark (specimen no C10012834). The genus is named after Otto Thott (1703-1785), a representative of the Danish enlightenment. He published the first academic thesis on the economy of Denmark and Norway, held numerous posts in the Danish-Norwegian government until a revolution organized by J.F. Struensee in 1770, was a highly important collector of ancient Danish manuscripts and books, and-by Royal appointment-the second president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (17631770). When the charters of the Academy were changed in a more democratic way, Thott was re-elected president by the members in 1776, but declined serving a second term. Today, Thottea is known as a genus of 26 species of shrubs and climbers, widespread in the forests of tropical Asia, some with known or potential medical properties. 

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Context 1

... of the symposium, we were reminded about the links between the Academy and tropical plant collections. An early member of the Academy, Christen Friis Rottböll , was the first to write on tropical plants in the publications of the Academy. He described three new genera of flow- ering plants, one named after a former president of the Academy (Fig. 1), and some additional new spe- cies collected in southern India (Rottböll 1783). The material on which this publication was founded is still in the herbarium of the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Through the following centuries, other members of the Academy contributed significantly to the botanical collections of tropical plants ...

Context 2

... represents specimen data). The data set includes both records of animals (ca. 2/3) and plants (ca. 1/3) and organisms in both terrestrial and marine environments. This huge availability of primary biodiversity data is in sharp contrast to the few specimens of each species available and considered necessary at the time of discovery of Thottea (Fig. 1), but the contrast between the amount of data available from the less biodiversity-rich temperate regions and the biodiversity-rich tropics is also ...