It grows on calcareous rocks, and has small, finely-divided leaves with a leathery texture and dark axes connecting the leaf segments.

[6] These are in turn divided into 2 to 3 pairs[6] of orbicular (circular)[2] or deltoid to ovate pinnules, obtuse at the tip and cordate (heart-shaped) or truncate (abruptly terminating) at the base[6] and borne on a short stalk.

[9] Both Edwin Copeland and Charles Alfred Weatherby suggested in the 1940s that a group of ferns related to Notholaena nivea might represent a distinct genus of its own.

Accordingly, in 1950, Conrad Vernon Morton transferred the species to Pellaea as P. jonesii, to provide a name for it in Thomas Henry Kearney's Flowering Plants and ferns of Arizona.

[12] In 1958, Philip A. Munz, preparing a flora of California and following Copeland's opinion that Notholaena was best lumped into a broadly defined Cheilanthes, transferred it to that genus as C. jonesii.

[13] John T. Mickel, carrying out a similar program of lumping in 1979, accidentally duplicated Munz's combination.

[14] The recognition of the N. nivea group as a genus was finally addressed in 1987 by Michael D. Windham, who was carrying out phylogenetic studies of the cheilanthoids.

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

[19] Argyrochosma jonesii is known in the United States from California, Arizona, Nevada, and southern Utah[20] and in Mexico from Sonora,[2] particularly within the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts.