The hairy peperomia was first described by the British botanists
William Jackson Hooker and
George Arnott Walker Arnott in 1832, based on material collected in Hawaii. In 1973 the German botanist
Ruprecht Düll reduced this to varietal status, giving it the name
Peperomia blanda var.
leptostachya which became the accepted name for approximately 40 years. More recently, in 2020, the Belgian botanist and
Peperomia authority
Guido Mathieu published a paper reverting the plant back to its original name.
Synonyms ,
Plants of the World Online recognises 34 synonyms of
P. leptostachya, as follows: ==Conservation==