350 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, VoL VIII, July, 1954 
ity, and collector, all of which allude to David 
Douglas and his Taxodium species. Douglas 
himself published no species of Taxodium. 
He was a very capable taxonomist and in his 
few months in London published papers and 
prepared manuscripts evidencing ability and 
productivity in this technical work. He was 
supreme as an explorer and botanical collector 
and left his indelible mark on the botany of 
North America and of the Pacific. He might 
well have published upon his observed Taxo- 
dium, but he perished on a mountain side in 
the Hawaiian Islands, apparently by murder. 
Douglas was an explorer, working for the 
Royal Horticultural Society of London, and 
he reported to it. One of his letters written 
at Monterey, Upper California, dated No- 
vember 23, 1831, was published by Hooker 
(1836: 150), "But the great beauty of Cali- 
fornian vegetation is a species of Taxodium,” 
etc. This passage was quoted by Hooker and 
Arnott, and above we quote their version 
which was complete, except that they omitted 
the following last sentence: "I possess fine 
specimens and seeds also." We discard Doug- 
las’ reference by memory to Taxodium mot- 
katense Nees, a name even yet unpublished, 
though Douglas may have known it as a 
manuscript name. Doubtless it was synony- 
mous with Cupressus motkatensis D. Don in 
Lamb. (1824), now accepted as Chamaecyparis 
motkatensis (D. Don in Lamb.) Sudw. (1897), 
the Alaska cedar. Douglas’ allusion was a 
misidentification based on a vague memory 
of that coastal tree of northwestern America. 
That leaves in his passage only his statements 
concerning the awesome Californian tree spe- 
cies that he had seen, 270 or more than 300 
feet tall and 32 feet in circumference 3 feet 
from the ground. He collected fine specimens 
and seeds. Doubtless these were sent to Eng- 
land, but they did not arrive. No such plant 
is included in the list of plants introduced by 
Mr. Douglas in 1834. A subsequent collector, 
William Lobb, who followed Douglas to 
Northwest America and California, wrote as 
follows, and the letter was published by Lind- 
ley (1854: 22): "I am well acquainted with 
every part of the country trod by Douglas . . . 
seldom 30 miles from the coast and 160 or 
more from the nearest big tree.” Lindley con- 
tinued, "It is therefore evident that no mate- 
rials exist for determining what Douglas really 
meant by his 'Taxodium,’ which may or may 
not have belonged to that genus, or, as End- 
LICHER conjectured, to Sequoia. But species in 
natural history cannot be founded upon con- 
jecture.” Thus, it is dear that Douglas on his 
trips never approached any of the big tree 
groves, and that his specimens which were 
probably of the redwood were lost in transit 
to England. The few descriptive words of his 
that were published posthumously are only 
measurements of some large trees, and they 
tally well with the dimensions and proportions 
of the redwood which was common in the re- 
gions he traversed. In sum, there is no part 
of the Taxodium species mentioned by Doug- 
las that can be demonstrated to apply to the 
big tree. Consequently, Sequoia gigantea Endl. 
(1847) is in larger part a synonym of S. sem- 
pervirens and, in smaller parts, of Abies religiosa 
(H.B.K.) Schlecht. & Cham, and Abies brac- 
teata (D. Don in Lamb.) Nutt. No part of it 
has been demonstrated to be based on the 
big tree, so it is impossible to typify the 
species by any fragment of the original con- 
cept which action might preserve the epithet 
for application to the big tree. 
As we have demonstrated earlier, the gen- 
eric name Wellingtonia of Lindley was a later 
homonym and hence illegitimate. For those 
who still retain the big tree and the redwood 
in the single genus Sequoia, this specific epi- 
thet gigantea of Lindley is cot available, as on 
transfer to Sequoia it becomes a later homo- 
nym of S. gigantea EndL, which is in larger 
part a synonym of S. sempervirens . If the big 
tree is best classified as a distinct genus, 
whether called Americas or Sequoiadendron, the 
epithet gigantea of Lindl. is available in either 
combination. 
Sequoia gigantea (Lindl.) Dene. (1854: 70- 
71), the next binomial, appeared in a pub- 
