It is the type genus of subfamily Depressariinae, which is often – particularly in older treatments – considered a distinct family Depressariidae or included in the Elachistidae, but actually seems to belong in the Oecophoridae.

Adrian Hardy Haworth, on establishing the genus Depressaria in his 1811 issues of Lepidoptera Britannica, called the eventual type species Phalaena heraclei, an unjustified emendation of P. (Tortrix) heracliana.

In this he followed such entomologists of his time as Anders Jahan Retzius, who in 1783 had believed the parsnip moth to be a species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758.

Horridopalpus is sometimes still included in Depressaria as a subgenus (namely by sources that uprank Depressariinae to full family status), but may be a far more distant relative.

The members of the proposed subgenus Hasenfussia are tentatively retained here on the other hand, but their relationship to other Depressaria requires further study.