[3] The species was first described in 1849 by the Swiss botanists Pierre Edmond Boissier and Rudolph Friedrich Hohenacker under the name Isopyrum caespitosum.

[8]: 49 The range of Paraquilegia carspitosa spans from northern Iran to Xinjiang in China and the western Himalayas.

[1] The Flora of China records the species's range including Afghanistan, Kashmir, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

[2] An erroneous description in the Flora Iranica suggested the species was endemic to Iran and attributed examples of what were likely P. carspitosa in the Hindu Kush and Pakistani mountains as Paraquilegia anemonoides.

[3] The presence of the species in Afghanistan was first confirmed with photographs of occurrences in rock crevices in the Hindu Kush, taken in the 1970s by Bob Gibbons.