The two arborescent species of this section are found in the barranca vegetation of the pine-oak forests or the evergreen cloud forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico, from Durango to Oaxaca and through the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt to Puebla and Veracruz, south in Central America to Panama, at elevations from 800 to 3,000 meters. Their leaves are opposite or whorled in sets of three or four. The numerous flowers are held in terminal panicles, with floral tubes less than eight millimeters long, and have smooth to lobed nectaries The spreading to reflexed sepals are colored a lustrous reddish purple and the petals are lavender. The stamens occur in two unequal series with yellow pollen. The fruit contains between 50 and 100 seeds.

The two species in this group are often confused with each other.

F. arborescens generally forms a larger shrub or small tree, with entire leaf margins. F. arborescens shows buds then blooms then berries sequentially

F. paniculata generally remains smaller and has leaf margins that are minutely to coarsely serrate. Flowering heads are a mixture of buds/blooms/berries at any one time

The name applied this to section first appeared in 1835 when the French-Alsatian botanist, Édouard Spach (1801-1879), thinking that Fuchsia arborescens’s lilac-like panicles made it quite unlikely that it could be closely related to Fuchsia, created the new monospecific genus of Schufia to hold it. The Austrian botanist, Stephan Endlicher (1804-1849), saw the proper connection and put Schufia arborescens back into Fuchsia in 1840. The name later was revived for the section. In origin, Schufia is simply an anagram of Fuchsia