[4] The rachis (leaf axis) is rounded on the upper side, dark in color, and bears soft hairs of uniform shape, but not scales.

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

[4] The species was first described in 1803, based on material from Tennessee and North Carolina, by André Michaux, who named it Nephrodium lanosum.

[8] In the same year, Kurt Sprengel independently described the species, based on material collected in the Carolinas by Louis Bosc, under the name of Adiantum vestitum.

[14] Early generic classifications, including those of Carl Borivoj Presl in 1836[15] and John Smith in 1842,[16] placed the species in a broadly circumscribed Cheilanthes.

Fée's classification of 1852 recognized several segregates, including the new genus Myriopteris, which he separated from Cheilanthes proper by the presence of hairs among the sporangia and some characteristics of the indusium.

[17] Fée did not examine Michaux's or Sprengel's species, but Smith recognized Myriopteris in his Cultivated Ferns of 1857 and transferred C. vestita into that genus.

[21] In the same year, David Allan Poe Watt suggested that Sprengel's and Michaux's plants might be the same, and noted the priority of C. lanosa, while reviewing the nomenclature of North American Cheilanthes; that combination is sometimes attributed to him.

M. L. Fernald reopened the question of the identity of Michaux's material in 1946, suggesting it had been mislabeled and really represented Cheilanthes tomentosa,[26] but this was refuted by C. V. Morton in 1967.

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.

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

[31] Myriopteris lanosa is found in the Appalachian Mountains from Connecticut southwest to Alabama, north through middle Tennessee into the Shawnee Hills and west through the Ozarks.

[33] It grows in shallow soil[4] on rocky slopes and ledges,[2] although not usually on cliff faces,[34] at an altitude from 100 to 800 meters (300 to 3,000 ft).