Its species are native from south Mexico through Central America to Nicaragua.

[2] The genus was erected by Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose in 1920,[3] with the single species Deamia testudo.

[4] It was treated as a distinct monotypic genus until 1965, when Franz Buxbaum merged it into Selenicereus.

Alexander Doweld revived the genus in 2002, adding the species then treated as Selenicereus chontalensis.

[5] As of March 2021[update], Plants of the World Online still placed D. chontalensis in the genus Selenicereus.