Wahlenbergia is a genus of between 150–270 species of flowering plants in the family Campanulaceae, with a cosmopolitan distribution except for North America; the highest species diversity is in Africa and Australasia. Wahlenbergia species have dispersed widely, even to oceanic islands, and there are four species known from the island of Saint Helena, including the now extinct species W. roxburghii. The genus was named after Göran Wahlenberg (a Swedish botanist who taught at Uppsala University) by German botanist H. A. Schrader (Heinrich Schrader), in 1814.