Yes...I'm growing it and like it quite a lot.

Nice shots of brandegei. Looks like the Torrey Pine Grove at Sta Rosa Is. Love this species. It like the Torrey Pines is limited to this island and to coastal so cal/no baja. The leaves are very unique and if resembled my any other species it would be eremostachya. I have an old specimem that I planted in 1996, I think, and i just measured it across at 22 feet. It's a giant now living under a dead Atlas Cedar. (I need to remove the cedar but the birds still use it and I fear for the integrity of my treasured brandegei.) The folks at Sta Barbara Bot Garden strongly suspect that "Pacific Blue" is a brandegei x munzi hybrid and i would tend to agree. PB has leaves that resemble brandegei but are much smaller as well as the dimensions of the plant, which is fairly compact like munzi. My garden is about 2.5 miles from the coast and I've never offered it supplemental H2O. According to an expert at Rancho Santa Ana Bot Garden, brandegei will bloom almost any time of year given some supplemental water.

Here is a link that might be useful: Salvia brandegei

Here's an anomaly: Philip Munz described & named the plant, and he spelled it "brandegei" in his "A Flora of Southern California," but Jepson spells it with two "e"s, "brandegeei." I haven't seen Munz's original paper, but the plant is probably named for either Thomas or Mary Brandegee (married, h & w). Thomas took credit for many things Mary did. Salviakeeper: AFAIK, there are no known natural localities of S. brandegeei on the so.Calif. mainland. Populations in Baja C. are authentic and, it seems to me, a botanical curiousity. I suppose they could've been distributed by migrating birds.

Thanks ccroulet. In my 1923 jepson guide brandegei is absent! Then in 1993 jepson spells the species brandegei but refers to the common name as Brandegee's. In the end, it's a very cool plant. I consider names fluid and sometime soon we'll be learning a whole list of new names with a republishing of jepson. I think it's now about 2+ yrs past its projected publish date.
Yep, S. brandegei is found south of the border, Pinus torreyana to the north. I look at the border as political division.
Anyway, fascinating that these two closely growing species on Sta Rosa I. both have distant populations on the mainland coast, distant on horseback but botanically close.

Santa Rosa island looks pretty, I've only ever been to Catalina and Anacapa. If I ever hit the lottery, first thing I'd do is get a sailboat and just anchor off those islands. I've thought about adding a Catalina ironwood tree, but it's touchy I hear. I do have the lavatera assurgentiflora, unique to those islands.

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Nice lavatera. If you want to add to your island collection, the ironwood is a great tree, and very drought tolerant. I have a bunch planted both in the open and in the oak grove and the trees do well in full sun as well as filtered light. They are very fast growing and in my experience need to be planted with gopher baskets because, like many island endemics, they are highly targeted by the subterranean rodents. I have one tree with a variety of salvias near the drip line as companion planting and they all do fine together.