 In 1799, the Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles described "Protea tridactylides", later identified as a junior synonym by Salisbury and the English horticulturalist Joseph Knight.Salisbury founded the new genus "Atylus" in 1807 to remove this and other species from "Protea", but did not make proper combinations for them in the new genus.It gained its current name in 1809 when it was redescribed as the anemone-leaved isopogon ("Isopogon anemonefolius") in the controversial work "On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae", published under Knight's name but written by Salisbury.