Other Names:  Lady Fingers, Mission Lettuce, San Diego Dudleya

Description:

An outstanding native succulent featuring clumping rosettes of finger-like olive leaves, with tips that blush rose with winter chill; showy cream flowers with chartreuse centers rise above the foliage in mid-spring; great in containers or rock gardens

Ornamental Features

Fingertips features dainty cymes of lightly-scented creamy white star-shaped flowers with chartreuse eyes rising above the foliage from mid spring to early summer. Its attractive succulent narrow leaves remain olive green in color with showy bluish-green variegation and tinges of silver throughout the year. The red stems can be quite attractive.

Landscape Attributes

Fingertips is an herbaceous evergreen perennial with a ground-hugging habit of growth. Its medium texture blends into the garden, but can always be balanced by a couple of finer or coarser plants for an effective composition.

This is a relatively low maintenance plant, and is best cleaned up in early spring before it resumes active growth for the season. It is a good choice for attracting butterflies and hummingbirds to your yard. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Fingertips is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Mass Planting
• Rock/Alpine Gardens
• General Garden Use
• Groundcover
• Container Planting

Planting & Growing

Fingertips will grow to be about 8 inches tall at maturity extending to 12 inches tall with the flowers, with a spread of 12 inches. Its foliage tends to remain low and dense right to the ground. It grows at a medium rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for approximately 15 years. As an evegreen perennial, this plant will typically keep its form and foliage year-round. As this plant tends to go dormant in summer, it is best interplanted with late-season bloomers to hide the dying foliage.

This plant does best in full sun to partial shade. It prefers dry to average moisture levels with very well-drained soil, and will often die in standing water. It is considered to be drought-tolerant, and thus makes an ideal choice for a low-water garden or xeriscape application. Like most succulents and cacti, this plant prefers to grow in poor soils and should therefore never be fertilized. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in sandy soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution, and will benefit from being planted in a relatively sheltered location. This species is native to parts of North America. It can be propagated by division.

Fingertips is a fine choice for the garden, but it is also a good selection for planting in outdoor pots and containers. Because of its spreading habit of growth, it is ideally suited for use as a 'spiller' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination; plant it near the edges where it can spill gracefully over the pot. Note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.