The species was first
described as
Pteris nivea by
Jean Louis Marie Poiret in
Lamarck's
Encyclopédie Méthodique, Botanique in 1804. He based his description on a specimen collected in
Peru by
Joseph de Jussieu. The
type specimen is
Jussieu s.n. (sheet 1074) at the
Paris Herbarium. The
specific epithet nivea, meaning "snowy", evidently refers to the "snow-white" color of the farina beneath the leaves. Shortly thereafter, in 1806,
Olof Swartz independently described the same species as
Acrostichum albidulum, based on South American material from
Luis Née. He distinguished
Acrostichum by the presence of
sporangia widely spread over the back of the leaf, rather than in discrete
sori. The epithet
albidulum, meaning "somewhat white", presumably also refers to the presence of the white farina, which he described with the same word; he credited the origin of the name to
Antonio José Cavanilles, who, however, never published it. Poiret's rather wide circumscription of
Pteris was subsequently narrowed by other botanists, removing
cheilanthoids like
P. nivea. However, delineating natural genera in the cheilanthoids has proven to be extremely difficult, and many different placements of the species were subsequently put forward. In 1811,
Nicaise Auguste Desvaux revived the genus
Cincinalis with his own circumscription, distinguishing it by the presence of
sporangia spreading more from the margins than in
Pteris but not so widely as in
Acrostichum. He transferred the species there as
C. nivea, and recognized
A. albidulum as a synonym. Problems with the application and form of the name
Cincinalis led Desvaux to abandon it in 1813 in favor of
Notholaena, placing the species there as
N. nivea, a name commonly used by other botanists for the species until the late 20th century. However, he reversed course in 1827 and moved it from
Notholaena to
Acrostichum as
A. niveum. In 1859,
Georg Heinrich Mettenius recognized the genus
Gymnogramma for species where
sporangia were borne along the nerves and not densely clustered at the end of the nerves. He transferred the species there as
G. nivea.
Karl Anton Eugen Prantl expanded
Pellaea to include several genera in which he perceived close affinities, including
Gymnogramma. Accordingly, he transferred
G. nivea to
Pellaea section
Cincinalis as
P. nivea in 1882.
Rodolfo Amando Philippi described material from the
Tarapacá Region of
Chile as
Cincinalis tarapacana in 1891, but
George Hieronymus, in 1909, considered it at most a form of
P. nivea. Both
Edwin Copeland and
Charles Alfred Weatherby suggested in the 1940s that
N. nivea and a group of related ferns might represent a genus distinct from
Notholaena. Weatherby thought that, until that genus was described, the group might better be placed in
Pellaea, rather than in
Notholaena, following the example of Prantl, but died in 1949 before he could circumscribe and publish it. The recognition of the
N. nivea group as a genus was finally addressed in 1987 by
Michael D. Windham, who was carrying out phylogenetic studies of the cheilanthoids. He elevated
Notholaena sect.
Argyrochosma to become the genus
Argyrochosma, and transferred this species to that genus as
A. nivea. In 2018,
Maarten J. M. Christenhusz transferred the species to
Hemionitis as
H. nivea, as part of a program to consolidate the cheilanthoid ferns into that genus. Meanwhile, in a 2017 treatment of Bolivian ferns, Michael Kessler and Alan R. Smith altered the circumscription of the species to exclude
A. nivea var.
flava and
A. nivea var.
tenera, elevating both to species level on the grounds of consistent differences in morphology and range and continued distinctness when growing
sympatrically. The variety,
Notholaena nivea var.
oblongata, has sometimes been distinguished from typical material, although it has no combination in
Argyrochosma. It has somewhat less dissected leaves than
A. nivea s.s. (bipinnate to almost tripinnate at the base), more oblong ultimate segments (sometimes almost triangular and lobed), terminal segments usually entire rather than lobed, a bright chestnut-brown stipe, and rhizome scales that are not crisped. ==Distribution and habitat==