Dioscorea is a genus of over 600 tuberous species that naturally occurs in the tropical and warm-temperate regions, 15 species are found in South Africa of which 12 are endemics. Almost all species have perennating organs such as a rhizome or tuber. The genus Dioscorea is named in honour of Pedanios Dioscorides who was a Greek author, botanist, physician and pharmacologist who lived in the first century AD. The species name sylvatica means ‘growing in woods’ or ‘forest loving’.

Dioscorea sylvatica has faced many name changes in the past. The plant was named in 1830 by Ecklon, but it was transferred to the genus Testudinaria by Kunth in 1850. In 1924 Knuth reduced Testudinaria to a subgenus of Dioscorea. In 1952 Burkill divided the section Testudinaria into three species, one of which was D. sylvatica. In 1953 Rowley restored Testudinaria to generic rank and it became T. sylvatica again and included D. hederifolia, but this change was not adopted. There is a need for a re-evaluation of infrageneric classification of genus Dioscorea using molecular and micromorphological data as indicated by recent cladistic analyses.