The genus name Baculellum, meaning ‘little stick’ is derived from the Latin baculum, meaning ‘peg’ or ‘stick’. The species name articulatum is also Latin, meaning ‘jointed’ or ‘with joints’. Both names referring to the distinctive stems of the plant.

Baculellum articulatum has proved difficult to classify taxonomically. It was first named Cacalia articulata by Linnaeus in 1781, and was moved to Kleinia by Haworth in 1812, then moved to Senecio by Schultz Bipontinus in 1845 and finally moved to Curio by Heath in 1997. It has the typical floral structure of Curio but has very different leaves and stems. A genetic analysis in 2017 by Ozerova, Schanzer and Timonin established that this species is distant enough from Curio and unlike any other species in the group to justify it being placed in a new genus, Baculellum. Their data shows that it diverged early from the Curio clade and lies somewhere between the Curio clade and Gynura-Solanecio-Kleinia assemblage within the subtribe Senecioninae.

Baculellum is a small genus, containing one species (monotypic). It belongs to the Asteraceae, a large family which includes over 25 000 species of flowering plants.