It bears linear to lanceolate scales 2 to 5 millimeters (0.08 to 0.2 in) long that terminate in a fine hair, of a uniform reddish-brown color, with entire (toothless) margins.

Both stipe and rachis (leaf axis) are round and chestnut-brown, bearing farina (powder) and a scattering of narrow linear or slightly lance-shaped scales 1 to 2 millimeters (0.04 to 0.08 in) of the same color.

[1][2] The sori lie along the veins, forming a band near the perimeter of the leaf segment only 0.5 to 1 millimeter (0.02 to 0.04 in) wide.

The name was originally invented by Charles Alfred Weatherby while working on a revision of Notholaena, but he died before completing it and it was left to Tryon to finish and publish.

While Tryon considered it impossible to reasonably subdivide Notholaena into sections based on the data available at the time,[7] 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 of its own.

[10] In the following year, it was transferred by John Mickel and Joseph Beitel into Cheilanthes as C. pallens, but this name had already been published in 1827, rendering it illegitimate.

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