The species was first described scientifically by English mycologist Miles Joseph Berkeley in 1853. The specific epithet curtisii honors Moses Ashley Curtis, who collected the type material from South Carolina. American mycologist William Murrill called it Ceriomyces curtisii in 1909, but Ceriomyces (as defined by Murrill in 1909) has since been subsumed into Boletus. In his 1947 monograph on boletes of Florida, Rolf Singer transferred the species to the genus Pulveroboletus, and made it the type of his newly described section Cartilaginei, which featured species with a glutinous or sticky stem, and a leather-colored to brownish hymenophore.
Murrill
Rolf Singer