Aa

Reichenbach fil., Xen. Orch.1 (1854), 18.

Cranichideae,II, III. Significance obscure . Made up possibly as a joke in the hope that the name would be forever at the head of any botanical list of genera, or from the first and final letters of Altensteinia, the genus from which the concept As was separated . Perhaps ,through rather improbably , dedicated to Mynheer Pieter van der Aa, a Dutchman ,as suggested by Hoehne .