Endlicher described many new plant genera, including the genus "Sequoia", and also its only extant species "Sequoia sempervirens" (California coast redwood). Although Endlicher never offered an explanation for the name, later writers speculated that he must have been inspired by the achievements of the American Cherokee Indian linguist Sequoyah. John Davis credited Endlicher with naming the new species of Sierra redwood "Sequoyah gigantea" in 1847, the present day "Sequoiadendron giganteum" (California giant redwood), to honor Sequoyah's invention of the Cherokee syllabary. Recent scholarship supports this hypothesis; Endlicher appears to have combined the Latin "sequi" (meaning "to follow") with his admiration of Sequoyah and coined "Sequoia" because the number of seeds per cone in the newly-classified genus fell in mathematical sequence with the other four genera in the suborder. .