[1][2] Vermilacinia tuberculata was originally described by Richard E. Riefner Jr., and collaborators in 1995,[3] preceded by its reference in 1994 in a key to Niebla species as "N. sp.

In the following paragraph Niebla tuberculata was stated to be “characterized by” “a triterpenoid chemistry lacking diterpenes, depsidones, and para or meta-depsides."

This distinction was further emphasized in their comparison with Niebla combeoides and Desmazieria ceruchoides ("a nomen nudum that will be redefined later"): "These taxa produce floccose deposits that extrude between cracks in the cortex with age.

The mold-like appearance of this deposit has been attributed to the presence of ceruchdiol (Benz et al. 1965),[4] a diterpene that is absent or the concentration too low to be detected by TLC in N.

[3] The reported absence of the diterpenes led Richard Spjut to conclude that a key difference in V. tuberculata was the absence of the diterpenes; (-)-16 α-hydroxykaurane[1] however, upon preparing to return specimens on loan from the University of Colorado Herbarium at Boulder, he noted two specimens from the type locality that had been determined by him to have (-)-16 α-hydroxykaurane with only trace amounts of zeorin.