Plant in a well-drained soil in full sun along the coast but looks best in part sun in hotter inland locations. This plant can tolerate garden conditions better than the similar looking Dudleya pulverulenta but it is still best if one keeps this plant drier in summer months and particularly avoid overhead irrigation during this time – this plant tolerates going without irrigation in summer in coastal gardens but can look better with a careful infrequent watering below the foliage – it does not cup the water in crown the same way that the similar looking Dudleya pulverulenta does. Hardy to around 15 F or slightly below. This is a great plant for the rock garden, a crack in a rock or wall or as a container specimen.

Dudleya brittonii species is native to coastal areas of the Pacific side of Baja California between Tijuana & Ensenada and on Isla Todos Santos where it grows on cliffs and hilly areas in lava rock and other very porous soils. The genus was named for William R. Dudley (1849-1911) Stanford University's first head of the botany department and the specific epithet honors Nathaniel Lord Britton (1859-1934), botanist and first Director of the New York Botanical Garden. Dr. Britton is also famous for his collaboration with Joseph Nelson Rose of the Carnegie Institute on The Cactaceae, a four-volume work started in 1906 and published in 1924. There are green forms of this plant but the plant we grow is a dusty chalky-white color. The coating that gives this plant this look is a wax-like substance on the surface of the cuticle that gives the leaves one of the highest ultraviolet reflectivity of any plant. This plant was first described by Dr. Donald A. Johansen, a Stanford Botanist, in 1933 in the Cactus and Succulent Journal of American (4:311) and an image graced the cover of the July 1973 issue of the California Horticultural Journal (Vol. 34 No. 3), the predecessor to Pacific Horticulture. Our plants from seed off of a Huntington Botanic Garden collection (HBG 71521) that was from an anonymous seed collection made at Rancho La Salina, between Tijuana & Ensenada. 

The information displayed on this page about Dudleya brittonii is based on the research we have conducted about it in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about this plant as it grows in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant have performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we have received from others and welcome hearing from anyone with information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information that will aid others to better grow it.