Short-leaved dudleya is a rare, tiny succulent that grows only on a few coastal mesas in San Diego County. It goes dormant above ground after flowering, so it needs bright, fast-draining conditions and very little water.
Family
Crassulaceae (Stonecrop family)
Grows as
Succulent
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly during the growing season and keep dry while dormant in summer.
Soil
Very well-drained, gritty mineral mix with little organic matter.
Temperature
10–30 °C; protect from hard frost.
How easy
Hard
Native range
California (W. San Diego Co.)
Climate
subtropical
About
Dudleya brevifolia, is a rare succulent plant known by the common name short-leaved liveforever, short-leaved dudleya or rarely the Del Mar Hasseanthus. It is an edaphic endemic that only grows on Lindavista formation marine terraces, on surfaces with ironstone nodules. The leaves are deciduous, and disappear after the inflorescence develops. The small white flowers are star-shaped with a yellow center. After flowering, any above ground trace of the plant will disappear, and it survives under the earth with a starch-rich subterranean caudex. Dudleya brevifolia is only found on coastal mesas along a small strip of coast in San Diego County, California.
It was formerly a subspecies of the similar Dudleya blochmaniae, and was not recognized as a distinct species because both plants grew and hybridized together.
Where it grows
The plant is endemic to coastal sage scrub habitats in southern California, found only in an extremely limited range within southwestern San Diego County. It is found at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve in the La Jolla neighborhood of the City of San Diego, and several sites in Del Mar, both coastal communities within the county.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dudleya brevifolia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.