This plant has a very extensive distribution, from Texas and adjacent states in the southeastern USA to Misiones in northern Argentina, the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, India, Sri Lanka and East and Southern Africa.

The earliest reference to this plant is thought to likely be an illustration included in the works on the flora of Brazil by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius.

It was named as Convolvulus heptaphyllus by William Roxburgh, who studied the plant in India in the late 18th century, but never validly described the species.

Roxburgh's name was validated in 1803 by Johan Peter Rottler and Carl Ludwig Willdenow in a German publication, based on a specimen collected in Madras, but a 1824 posthumous printing of the Flora Indica -constructed from Roxburgh's edited notes, was incorrectly used in later British works to attribute authorship of the name to him anyway.

Gray mistakenly attributed the origin of the holotype specimen to "southern Texas",[1] but it had actually been collected by Wright in Cuba.

Furthermore, in I. cairica the flower petals are rounded at their ends as opposed to slightly pointed, and the leaves are somewhat longer than they are broad.

Although it had always been seen as native to the United States, with I. wrightii first having been described from Texas, it has recently been added as an invasive species in the US in some internet databases.