The species is usually found inland from the immediate coastal environment in wind-sheltered microenvironments, which may be leeward sides of small stones or rock ledges on vertical rock walls in narrow arroyos[1] Vermilacinia cedrosensis is classified in subgenus Vermilacinia in which it is distinguished by its whitish to pale yellowish green thallus divided into flexuous tubular-prismatic branches arising from a holdfast.

Lichen substances are primarily three terpenes characteristic of the subgenus Vermilacinia, an unknown referred to as "T3", bourgeanic acid, the diterpene (-)-16 α-hydroxykaurane, and the triterpene zeorin.

[1] In 1986, Spjut assigned the epithet name albicans—in regard to the thallus color—to the specimen he collected in an initial draft of a manuscript on the genus Niebla reviewed by the lichen curator, Mason E. Hale, Jr.[7] He collected the species again in May 1986 in the Sierra Hornitos (Spjut 1996, Plate 3A, see also Plate 10C[1]) on the Vizcaíno Peninsula (Spjut, Marin & McCloud 9689A, US),[8] and on Cedros Island in April 1989 (Spjut & Marin 10544, US) in regard to a proposed lichen flora of Baja California, superseded by the ‘Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert’ headed by Thomas Nash III, first volume published in 2002; the species named Niebla cedrosensis and described by Janet Marsh (with Thomas Nash III) in 1994 based on their collection of the species on Cedros Island earlier that same year, March 12, 1994.

[1] However, Peter Bowler and Janet Mash did not accept the presence of “chondroid strands” as a character attribute for separating genera of North American Ramalinaceae; only those in the Macaronesian and Mediterranean regions were distinguished from Ramalina by having chondroid strands unattached to the cortex, a distinction they reinforced by new name combinations made in Niebla for Macaronesian and Mediterranean species previously in Ramalina.

[15] Additionally, R. Heber Howe[16] had indicated the presence of chondroid strands was almost of generic importance, and perhaps would have distinguished what is now called Vermilacinia if thin-layer chromatography had been available to him during his time.