The fungus was described as new to science in 1963 by mycologists Lexemuel Ray Hesler and Alexander H. Smith in their monograph on North American species of Hygrophorus [REF].
Deborah Jean Lodge and colleagues, in a reorganization of the family Hygrophoraceae based on molecular phylogenetics, proposed that H. appalachianensis should be the type species of the new section Pseudofirmae in genus Hygrocybe [REF].