His description was based on the specimen Charles Christopher Parry & Edward Palmer 989, collected by those two botanists in Central Mexico.

He noted that it was similar to Cheilanthes viscosa, but bore long, soft hairs without glands (presumably the source of the epithet "longipila"), and had a leaf blade widest near the middle rather than at the base.

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.

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