Genus Hottonia

For Pieter (Petrus) Hotton (Houttuyn) (1648–1709), Dutch botanist and physician, professor of botany at Leiden University (1678–1680) and supervisor of the university’s botanical garden, for which he imported exotic plants from Sri Lanka. In 1681 he returned to his medical practice in Amsterdam, but when Jan Commelin (1629–1692) died, he took over his responsibilities as officer in charge of the Amsterdam Hortus Botanicus. Three years later, in 1695, Paul Herman, German professor of botany at Leiden, died, and Hotton took over his post. He did not publish much but had extensive correspondence with his contemporaries. In 1703 he wrote a revised edition of Ray’s Methodus Plantarum. He was a member of the Royal Society of London.