In 1847, Endlicher of Vienna, one of the most eminent botanists of his time, wrote a comprehensive work on botany, and, having seen sections of the wood, cones, bark and leaves of the big trees of California found them to be a distinct variety, and named them in honor of the great Cherokee, Sequoyah gigantea. in: Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 8, No. 2, June, 1930 THE LIFE AND WORK OF SEQUOYAH By John B. Davis, B. S., M. A. digital.library.okstate.edu
The Americans promptly published a spate of invalid names. The French (always ready to irritate the English) then intervened in the person of Joseph Decaisne, who in 1854 published the species as Sequoia gigantea, a plausible assignment that ultimately won acceptance by British botanists. Thereafter Wellingtonia slowly disappeared from the literature. Unfortunately, Sequoia gigantea was an invalid name, having been previously used by Endlicher to describe a horticultural variety of the coast redwood, and this problem was not satisfactorily resolved until the American John T. Buchholz described Sequoiadendron in 1939. in: Sequoiadendron giganteum (Lindley) Buchholz 1939 biologie.uni-hamburg.de