Unlike many members of its genus, its leaves have a few hairs on upper and lower surfaces, or lack them entirely.

[2] On fertile fronds, the sori are protected by false indusia formed by the edge of the leaf curling back over the underside.

[4] Beneath them, the sori are usually not continuous around the edge of the leaf, and are often concentrated on lateral lobes of the fertile pinnulets,[2] particularly at the ends of veins.

He distinguished it from Cheilanthes microphylla, found growing with it, by its greater degree of cutting and the triangular shape of the leaf blade.

[5] The development of molecular phylogenetic methods showed that the traditional circumscription of Cheilanthes, including that used by Maxon, is polyphyletic.

Convergent evolution in arid environments is thought to be responsible for widespread homoplasy in the morphological characters traditionally used to classify it and the segregate genera that have sometimes been recognized.

On the basis of molecular evidence, Amanda Grusz and Michael D. Windham revived the genus Myriopteris in 2013 for a group of species formerly placed in Cheilanthes.

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

M. allosuroides belongs to what Grusz et al. informally named the alabamensis clade, and is sister to a group consisting of M. microphylla, M. moritziana, M. scabra, and M. fimbriata.

[3] The species grows on limestone bedrock, on rocky slopes and ledges,[2][3][5] and in cracks and openings in the rock.