[1] The type specimens include one collected by Joseph Dombey near Lima of Peru and another by Archibald Menzies (lectotype) from Chile, possibly near Valparaíso.

Vermilacinia ceruchis was not among the "macrolichens" lichens he reportedly found, which were: "Heterodermia leucomelos, Niebla tigrina, Ramalina celastri, R. cochlearis, R. peruviana, R. pilulifera, Roccellina suffruticosa, and Xanthoria mendozae, all deviating ecologically and (or) morphologically from the typical forms."

These were in "mats" in sheltered soil depressions among cactus skeletons and diorite rocks that had "mass development of saxicolous ecotype of Chrysothrix pavonii".

Follmann further stated Austropeltis pervuiana and Leprocaulon subalbicans were on ground; on cactus skeletons were Trentepohlia sp., Roccellaria mollis and Tornabea ephebea.

[1][4] In 1810, Acharius transferred the species to the genus Borrera (B. ceruchis) in his Lichenographia Universalis where he also was the first to describe and name Ramalina homalea, from a specimen collected by Menzies on rocks around San Francisco.

[5] In 1852, Jean Camille Montagne viewed the two species as one and the same in a new monotypic genus, Desmazieria (D. homalea),[6] an illegitimate name according to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Art.

[18] Although Howe[17] recognized Ramalina (Vermilacinia) ceruchis as a corticolous species, his interpretation of it as being the same as the type from South America is not supported by the thin-layer chromatography data.