In my country Elephantophus scaber are known as "Tapak liman" which translates to English as Elephants foot, If I'm not mistaken due to the rough texture of the foliages, and the way leaves lay almost flat on the soil surface, wrinkle, and rough, that somewhat remind people of the rough texture of Elephant's skin/foot.
In India and other region which E scaber occur it is also named Elephant's foot
It may be or may-not be the origin of the genus name.
Strangely I wonder why in the past this Asteraceae was named (now synonym) as Scabiosa cochinchinensis (Vietnamese Scabious), perhaps the flower structure made the previous taxonomist ( (1790) - Flora cochinchinensis) confused it to a totally different Family of plants in Caprifoliaceae?, or perhaps it was named based only by the foliage that resembles Scabious, I guess the later.
I believe that the Asian species Tofi describes, Elephantopus scaber is considered the "type" of the genus, and I imagined that it must look more like an elephant's foot than the U.S. species.
Looking at photos of E. scaber, the resemblance isn't striking, but then again, I haven't ever examined an actual elephant's foot up close...
Yes Elephantopus scaber is the type species on that genus
Some of them might have less wrinkled foliages, but the good specimen will look like below
Just for a fun comparison, I bet all day walking in the jungle would made people in the old days, bit halucinating seeing those leaves slightly similar to elephant's foot We too some times get weird inspiration when we are tired
Actually, your photos do make the connection clearer...
The species I'm familiar with don't have the wrinkly leaves like the type is. I suppose there are more boring things you could compare the rugose leaves to, but an elephant's foot is certainly memorable.
