Unlike many members of its genus, its leaf is only modestly dissected into lobed leaflets (pinnae), which are hairy both above and below.

[2][6] The leaf blades are linear to lanceolate[2] or elliptical,[5] and pinnate-pinnatifid (cut into deeply lobed pinnae),[2][6] much less dissected than most Myriopteris species.

[7][6] The lower surface of the pinnae is also covered in hairs, matted so thickly as to hide the leaf tissue, which vary from white, particularly when young,[5] to rusty red in color.

[2][3] The vast majority of M. aurea individuals thus far examined are apogamous triploids, with a chromosome number of 90 present in both sporophyte and gametophyte.

[10] Among its congeners M. aurea is most similar to M. yatskievychiana, known only from Sonora which is smaller and has dense white (rather than rusty) hairs on the underside of the leaf.

[12] The species was first described as Pteris aurea by Jean Louis Marie Poiret in Lamarck's Encyclopédie Méthodique, Botanique in 1804.

[19] The specific epithet ferruginea means "rusty-reddish",[20] perhaps referring to the color of the hairs below, so described by Willdenow for A. bonariense.

[21] In his Reliquae Haenkeanae in 1825, Carl Borivoj Presl recognized that A. bonariensis and C. ferruginea were the same species, but (illegitimately) invented the new name of Notholaena rufa to encompass both.

[23] The specific epithet rufa, meaning "reddish",[24] corresponds to his description of the color of hairs on both sides of the leaf.

[30] It was not until 1939 that Charles Alfred Weatherby, who was looking for type specimens in Desvaux's collections at the Paris herbarium, identified Notholaena aurea as the most senior name for the species in that genus and unraveled the erroneous synonymies.

[18] One of these was Rolla M. Tryon Jr. who, in 1956, published a revision of American Notholaena incorporating material from Weatherby, who had died in 1949.

[32] Tryon noted that the generic delimitation of Notholaena and Cheilanthes, based on the traditional criterion that the latter had leaf edges curled under and modified into distinct false indusia while the former did not, was unsatisfactory, given the existence of many intermediate forms.

In 1982, he and his wife Alice published an extended survey of the ferns in which they narrowed the circumscription of Notholaena, treating N. aurea as C. bonariensis.

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.

[34] In 2018, Maarten J. M. Christenhusz transferred the species to Hemionitis as H. bonariensis (H. aurea being preoccupied), as part of a program to consolidate the cheilanthoid ferns into that genus.

[37] Myriopteris aurea grows throughout Mexico except for Tabasco and the Yucatan Peninsula, where it is the most widespread and abundant fern in the country.

[2][39] The range extends slightly north into the United States, into Arizona, New Mexico, and Trans-Pecos Texas.

[2] The species grows on dry, rocky slopes,[2] and cliffs,[6][41] soil banks, and shrubby hillsides.

[42] Edward Palmer collected a specimen at the market in Saltillo in 1898, where he reported that a decoction was prepared from it and drunk to treat "pain in the stomach" and "coughs".