This treatment is followed by other sources, although the two taxa are frequently treated as two species, "Allium tricoccum" and Allium burdickii. "A. tricoccum" var. "burdickii" was first described by Clarence Robert Hanes in 1953; the epithet "burdickii" is in honor of Justin Herbert Burdick (1851–1939), a Midwestern physician and manufacturer who pointed out differences between what were then regarded as different "races" in letters to Asa Gray. The variety was raised to a full species by Almut Gitter Jones in 1979.