The genus Utricularia is confounding and bizarre. You are simply wrong if you think that the genus can be dismissed as a set of free-floating lake weeds, or stringy terrestrial species with tiny leaves. Many of its species produce mysterious, strange structures; the diversity of peculiar things exhibited by Utricularia species astonishes.

The production of tubers is such an example—nearly twenty species of Utricularia are known to generate them. (Plant physiologists might argue whether all these structures are truly tubers in the technical sense.) The species that produce tubers are not particularly closely related to each other; Taylor (1989) notes that they occur in six separate sections (Aranella, Chelidon, Orchidioides, Phyllaria, Pleiochasia, Utricularia).