Plants in this tribe have only disc florets (no ray florets) and their petals are white, slightly yellowish off-white, pink, or purple (never a full yellow).[4][6]
Within the aster family, the Eupatorieae are in the subfamily Asteroideae.[7] Within Asteroideae, they are in the supertribe Helianthodae.[8] Within Helianthodae, they belong to an informal group without taxonomic rank called the phytomelanincypsela clade, which contains 11 tribes.
The sister tribe of Eupatorieae is probably Perityleae. This result received moderate statistical support (68% bootstrap percentage) in a study published in 2002.[9]
^Susanna, Alfonso; Baldwin, Bruce G.; Bayer, Randall J.; Bonifacino, José Mauricio; Garcia‐Jacas, Núria; Keeley, Sterling C.; Mandel, Jennifer R.; Ortiz, Santiago; Robinson, Harold; Stuessy, Tod F. (2020). "The classification of the Compositae: A tribute to Vicki Ann Funk (1947–2019)". Taxon. 69 (4): 807–814. doi:10.1002/tax.12235. S2CID225592435.
^D.J.N.Hind & H.E.Robinson. 2007. Tribe Eupatorieae In: The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants vol.VIII. (Joachim W.Kadereit & Charles Jeffrey, volume editors. Klaus Kubitzky, general editor). Springer-Verlag. Berlin, Heidelberg.
^Turner,B.L.(1997). Eupatorieae. In: Turner,Billie Lee (editor) The Compositae of Mexico. A systematic account of the family Asteraceae, vol.1. Phytologia Memoirs 11:i-iv,1-272.
^Panero,J.L. & Funk,V.A. (2008). "The value of sampling anomalous taxa in phylogenetic studies: Major clades of the Asteraceae revealed". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 47 (2): 757–782. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.02.011. PMID18375151.
^Robinson,H.E. 2002. "New supertribes, Helianthodae and Senecionodae, for the subfamily Asteroideae (Asteraceae)". Phytologia86(3):116-120
^Panero,J.L., & Funk,V.A.. 2002. "Toward a phylogenetic subfamilial classification for the Compositae (Asteraceae)". Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington115(4):909-922