The large shrub with conspicuous purple flowers is native to a very restricted area in southeast Madagascar and was described in 1996.

[2][3] The rather conspicuous plant was collected for the first time in 1947 by the French botanist Jean-Henri Humbert, but remained unrecognized in the herbarium of the Musée d´Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

[3] It was named in honor of the botanist and biomimetics scientist Wilhelm Barthlott, who had been interested in the Vegetation of the Inselbergs of Madagascar.

[4] E. Fischer discovered over the last decades many new species, under them the world smallest waterlily (Nymphaea thermarum).

Barthlottia seems to have no closer relatives in Madagascar and resembles distantly the Namibian Manuelopsis dinteri.