[2][3] It bears thin,[2] narrowly lanceolate[4] or linear[2] brown to dark orange,[3] chestnut-brown,[2] or reddish-brown scales[4] 4 to 7 millimeters (0.2 to 0.3 in),[3] of a uniform color and with entire (toothless) margins.

[4] They vary from deltate (triangular) to ovate in shape,[3][5] and range from tripinnate (cut into pinnae, pinnules and pinnulets) to quadripinnate at the base, where the leaf blade is most divided;[3][5] it becomes merely bipinnate near the tip.

[3][5] The small leaf segments and shallow groove on the rachis make A. microphylla distinct from other species in the genus.

[6] The species was first described in 1869 as Pellaea microphylla by Max Kuhn, who was presenting material the herbarium left behind by the late Georg Heinrich Mettenius.

[8] Rolla M. Tryon Jr., when finishing Charles Alfred Weatherby's revision of American Notholaena, transferred the species there under the replacement name of N. parvifolia, the name N. microphylla being preoccupied.

[9] While Tryon considered it impossible to reasonably subdivide Notholaena into sections based on the data available at the time,[10] both Edwin Copeland and Weatherby himself had suggested in the 1940s that a group of ferns related to N. nivea might represent a distinct genus.

[11] John T. Mickel, following Copeland's opinion that Notholaena was best lumped into a broadly defined Cheilanthes, transferred the species there as C. parviflora in 1979.

[12] 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 these genera.

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

[3] It grows on rocky limestone hillsides and cliffs and talus slopes, at altitudes from 300 to 2,100 meters (980 to 6,900 ft).