Plenty of celebrities use their fame as a way to advocate for the causes near and dear to their hearts, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s advocacy for environmental matters one of the highest-profile examples of this out there. (And it certainly doesn’t hurt that his latest film project finds a way to dovetail his leading-man status with his areas of concern.) But now, the actor has joined another rarefied group — namely, that of people who now have a namesake species.
Yes, this means that Leonardo DiCaprio and Metallica now have something in common. The world grows stranger by the day.
The first plant species newly documented by scientists in 2022 is a modestly sized evergreen located in Cameroon, reports Smithsonian Magazine. Its habitat is in the Ebo Forest, which the actor and activist has worked to preserve from the logging industry — and that’s why this particular tree will henceforth be known as Uvariopsis dicaprio.
In a statement, Dr. Martin Cheek of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew addressed the decision behind the tree’s name. “We very much appreciated the support Leo gave us in campaigning to protect Ebo last year so it seemed fitting to honour him in this way, naming a species unique only to this forest, after him,” Cheek said.
The announcement came as part of the Gardens’ recap of new species for 2021, which also includes a fungus with teeth. Leonardo DiCaprio has a namesake tree and some fungi have teeth; the world is truly a strange and miraculous place sometimes.
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