Joseph Banks and
Daniel Solander collected specimens of the plant in New Zealand in 1769 or 1770, but Solander's manuscripts were never published. The locality of their collection is stated by later authors as either the
Bay of Islands or
Queen Charlotte Sound (Totara nui).
Georg Forster (1786) listed the name "
Scorzonera scapigera S." in an appendix without description.
Allan Cunningham gave a brief description in 1839, mentioning Solander's manuscripts and Banks' specimens plus another specimen collected by his brother
Richard.
Joseph Dalton Hooker thought that the species didn't belong well in
Scorzonera: he had proposed a subgenus, then placed it in
Microseris, beside
M. pygmæa of Chile. He gave the name
Microceris Forsteri in 1852, however Cunningham's description with the epithet
scapigera takes precedence.
Carl Heinrich Schultz 'Bipontinus' published the combination
Microseris scapigera in 1866, listing Hooker's
M. forsteri and Forster's
S. scapigera as synonyms. Neither Hooker nor Schultz referenced Cunningham's description; in 2015 Sneddon designated a
lectotype for Schultz's name. Some authorities have grouped
M. scapigera with the other Australian forms into single species under the name
M. lancifolia, for example
A census of the vascular plants of Victoria, Edition 3. (1990) and
Australian Plant Census (2011). == Botanical naming ==