In 1896, Engler published a division of the family Rutaceae into seven subfamilies.

[2] Engler's division into subfamilies largely relied on the characteristics of the fruit, as did others used until molecular phylogenetic methods were applied, which showed that Rutoideae cannot be clearly differentiated from other members of the family based on fruit.

Applehans et al. divided the family into six subfamilies, with their Rutoideae containing only five genera.

They considered that a revised classification at the tribal level was not feasible at the time their paper was published.

[1] Five genera were placed in Rutoideae in the Appelhans et al. (2021) classification of the Rutaceae into subfamilies:[1]