It was traditionally treated at family rank as Lennoaceae, and placed in different orders by different authors, including Lamiales (in the Cronquist system) and Solanales (Dahlgren system).

More recently, molecular phylogenetic publications grouped it within the clade "Euasterids I", and most recently, it was demoted to a subfamily of the family Boraginaceae in the APG II system.

[1] This subfamily has a disjunct distribution, occurring in Colombia as well as a separate area in southwestern North America, covering parts of California, Arizona and Mexico.

[2] Members of this subfamily are succulent, herbaceous plants with no chlorophyll.

[3] The leaves are reduced to short scales, and the plants are entirely parasitic on the roots of their hosts, which are typically Clematis, Euphorbia or various woody Asteraceae.