Apteria aphylla (Nuttall) Barnhart ex Small

Firstly described by Nuttall (1822) as a Lobelia aphylla, from a collection made by A. Ware in east Florida. Later, Nuttall (1834) recognized this plant as a relative to the genus Tripterella Michx. (today synonymous to Burmannia) differing by the lack of perianth wings. Therefore, he gave it the name Apteria (= without wings), however, in combination with the illegitimate epitheton setacea, instead of the correct aphylla as he called the assumed Lobelia before. The correct recombination to Apteria aphylla was done by Barnhart in Small (1903). Apteria aphylla occurs throughout the New World tropics and subtropics from southern USA to south Brazil. I might be due to its wide geographic distribution that Apteria aphylla is variable in corolla size and tube length, which in turn has resulted in several species names. These names were reduced to three at the time of Jonker (1938). Later, Maas et al. (1986) also synonymized the remaining names to the single species A. aphylla, but allowing three 'form-types'.