The genus was described by Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet in 1775, its name derived from a local name roupale in French Guiana.

[1] In their 1975 monograph on the Proteaceae, Lawrie Johnson and Barbara Briggs placed it in a subtribe Roupalinae alongside the New Caledonian genus Kermadecia as the genera had similar floral parts and leaves.

[4] Clock dating with molecular and fossil data indicated ancestors of the genus may have split from Neorites in the mid-Oligocene around 30 million years ago, and that this lineage in turn separated from the ancestors of Orites in the late Eocene around 36 million years ago.

Four of these (R. barnettiae, R. percoriacea, R. thomesiana and R. tobagensis) are only known from a single collection of each species,[1]: 18  as is Roupala gertii, newly described in 2012.

[1]: 117  Accord to Prance and colleagues, Roupala species were "almost certainly" pollinated by insects, and have wind- and water-dispersed seeds (the latter being common in Amazonian forests subject to annual flooding).

Several species, including R. sculpta (known only from the São Paulo State Park Botanic Garden where it grows both wild and cultivated) and R. consimilis, are endemic to southern or southeastern Brazil.

[8] Members of the genus are used for fuel wood, high quality charcoal, medicinally and to a limited extent for woodworking and construction.