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Palm Trees, Mammoths, and the Obamadon: A Tour Through Presidential Taxonomy

US presidents have a slew of species named after them.
Obamdon is the little guy up front one. Photo: Yale University

Sometimes monuments, elementary schools, and entire states aren't enough: You haven't truly made it in the United States until someone has named a living thing after you. While George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did well enough to get some slime mold beetles named after them in 2005, some of the Founding Fathers did a bit better.

With roughly 1.9 million known and named species on Earth, there's plenty of names to go around, but it's safe to say that you get dibs on better species if you were hanging around with biologists back in the country's infancy. Here's some of the better species named after American politicians.

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Washington palms litter mini golf courses around the country. Photo: Flickr/MikeBaird

George Washington: Ol' George has Washingtonia, a genus of palms native to much of the southwest. It has been cultivated all over the country, and you've no doubt seen them around.

Benjamin Franklin: No turkey species named after the man who famously wanted to make them our national bird, but Ben Franklin has the entire Franklinia tea tree genus—native to Georgia—named after him. Unfortunately, it's been extinct in the wild since the late 1800s. The trees remain popular in nurseries for their white flowers and the challenge they present to gardeners: They're notoriously tough to grow (hence the extinction thing). And yes, we know Franklin was never president, but he makes the list anyway.

Jefferson's megalonyx, a giant, ice-age era sloth. Photo: North Dakota State Fossil Collection

Thomas Jefferson: Jefferson also went and got a genus named after him: Jeffersonia wildflowers are regularly seen on the East Coast and were named after him before he even became President by his contemporary, Benjamin Smith Barton, who is credited with publishing the first American textbook of botany.

But screw wildflowers: Jefferson has a MAMMOTH named after him, the Mammuthus jeffesoni. Allegedly, part of the reason for the whole Louisiana Purchase was to see if the west had any living mammoths. As a noted fossil collector, had one of the first known remains of the Megalonyx jeffersonii, a giant sloth discovered in a West Virginia cave. Then there's the Chesapecten jeffersonius, an extinct scallop that is now the state fossil of Virginia, which is a thing.

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An elk worthy of the Roosevelt name. Photo: Flickr/goingslo.

Teddy Roosevelt: It makes sense that the leader of the Bull Moose Party and the man who established the National Parks System and regularly sojourned into the wilderness would have a lot of animals named after him: He's got the Cervus canadensis roosevelti—the Roosevelt elk—which is the largest surviving North American elk, Roosevelt's Shrew (found in parts of Central Africa), the Muntiacus rooseveltorum (a barking deer discovered by his son on a hunting trip), and two beetles named after him.

Franklin Roosevelt: The Roosevelts knew how to get their names on things: FDR brought along naturalist Waldo Schmitt on 24-day cruise through Central and South America in 1938, scoring the genus / species combo Rooseveltia frankliniana, a type of palm tree. He's also got sponges, mollusks, crustaceans, and annelids named after him, but you've got to think the Octopus roosevelti—discovered on a cruise he sponsored—was held in his highest esteem.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld: The holy trifecta got some beetles (Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi, A. rumsfeldi) named after them in 2005, when Cornell entomologists Kelly Miller and Quentin Wheeler went on a discovering spree. Wonder if it's any coincidence they also happened to name one after Darth Vader at the same time?

Obama's trapdoor spider. Photo: Jason Bond

Barack Obama: As a historic president, taxonomists have gone on an Obama naming spree. You thought all the cool animals were taken, but last year saw the discovery of the Obamadon, an ancient lizard that lived alongside dinosaurs. He's also got a hair worm and a trapdoor spider, but he'll probably never forget the first species named after him, the Caloplaca obamae, a lichen named after him soon after he was elected.