[3] Of this length, about half is made up by the stipe (the stalk of the leaf, below the blade), which is shiny and round, hairless, and dark purple to black in color, occasionally chestnut-brown.

[5] The leaf blades are deltate (triangular)[2] or lanceolate,[4] tripinnate (cut into pinnae, pinnules and pinnulets) to almost quadripinnate at their bases.

[3][5] The underside of the leaf is coated in white farina (powder), which may be sparsely scattered on the upper surface[2] or absent from it.

Material collected in several states of northern Mexico, with small segments, somewhat zig-zag and dark purplish axes may represent an as yet undescribed species.

[7] Two specimens collected by C. H. Müller and his wife Mary in Nuevo Leon are anomalous in having chestnut-brown axes and rougher spores, similar to A. delicatula, but their size, abundance of farina below, and lack of it above, led Maxon and Weatherby to classify them as A. incana.

[2] Most specimens in the United States were originally mislabeled as A. limitanea, but this species lacks the joint and abrupt end of dark color at the base of its leaf segments.

[10] It was first described in 1825 by Carl Borivoj Presl as Notholaena incana, based on material collected by Thaddäus Haenke in Mexico.

[17] William Ralph Maxon and Charles Alfred Weatherby placed N. incana within a group of ferns closely related to Notholaena nivea.

[2] In 2018, Maarten J. M. Christenhusz transferred the species to Hemionitis as H. incana, as part of a program to consolidate the cheilanthoid ferns into that genus.

[26] David Lellinger reports a specimen (Gómez 7156, CR) collected in Costa Rica, although this occurrence is not mentioned in other floras.

[28] At the northern edge of its range, in the United States, it is found growing from canyon walls, exclusively on igneous rock.