The species of Volkameria are mostly shrubs, sometimes subshrubs or lianas, rarely small trees.

[6] Volkameria was originally named (as "Volcameria") by German botanist Lorenz Heister in Index plantarum rariorum (1730), the name subsequently being adopted by Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus[7] and validly published in his Species Plantarum (1753).

[8] Heister named the genus after the German botanist Johann Georg Volckamer the Younger (1662-1744),[9] who had described the plant in his Flora Noribergensis (1700).

[10] This was considered questionable by many, but for the next 100 years, Briquet's circumscription was usually followed, mostly because of confusion and uncertainty regarding this group of at least 200 species.

[3] In 2010, a molecular phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences showed that most of the Clerodendrum species that had been in Volkameria were more closely related to Aegiphila, Ovieda, Tetraclea, and Amasonia than to other species of Clerodendrum.