Like many other cheilanthoid ferns, it is adapted to dry conditions, bearing a thick layer of pale hairs on the underside of its pinnate-pinnatifid leaves.

The rhizome bears linear scales up to 2 millimeters (0.08 in) long, which are blackish-brown in color, growing pale brown at the margins.

The rachis (leaf axis) is similar in appearance to the stipe, but largely retains its hairs even in older fronds.

Friedrich Adalbert Maximilian Kuhn, in his Filices Africae of 1868, followed the unpublished notes of the recently deceased Georg Heinrich Mettenius in choosing to transfer it to Cheilanthes as C. rawsonii,[6] the name that would typically be used for it during the 20th century.

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.

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

M. rawsonii belongs to what Grusz et al. informally named the lanosa clade, where it is sister to the Sonoran Desert endemic M. parryi.

[2] It is found on hot, rocky hillsides, often on south- or east- facing slopes where crevices or boulders offer some shade and help preserve moisture for the plant.