[1] The species epithet, pulchribarbara, is in reference to the strikingly beautiful lichen mat formed by the thallus.

Niebla pulchribarbara was described by Phillip Rundel and Peter Bowler as a result of conducting an ecological study of a lichen fog community at Bahía de San Quintín in March 1971.

[3] However, the two new species were distinguished by the habit of the thallus, saxicolous with branches connected to a basal holdfast (N. josecuervoi), and terricolous, lying loose on sand (N. pulchribarbara).

[1] Three are at the United States National Herbarium of which two were collected by Spjut from a mesa above San Antonio del Mar, 25 March 1988 and 13 April 1990; the third was from Bahía de San Quintín, the type locality; it was collected by Velva E. Rudd in late January 1972 in regard to the Edward Palmer Project.

Although Niebla pulchribarbara was considered distinct from N. josecuervoi by Rundel and Bowler when they described the species in 1972, Bowler and Janet Marsh in 2004 decided they were no longer distinct; N. pulchribarbara was included under a broad species concept of N. josecuervoi in the Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert.