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Grand fir is rated moderately flammable.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand uses seven flammability bands, with moderate as the central band. That classification is grounded in shoot-flammability testing at Lincoln University. It gives a homeowner a reason to be cautious about choosing grand fir where low flammability is the goal.
A separate measurement in the FLAMITS database comes from a 1979 United States Forest Service study. Predried grand fir bark had a calorific value of 5,357.31 kilocalories per kilogram, measured in a calorimeter. This describes the heat released per unit mass when the bark burns; it does not measure how readily a living tree ignites.
Grand fir reaches about 150 feet at maturity and needs moderate water. The tree belongs to the pine family. Those planting characteristics belong alongside the fire findings when considering its place in a garden. For fire resistance, the useful distinction is between the moderate shoot-flammability classification and the measured heat content of dried bark. They describe different aspects of burning, and neither supplies a basis for calling grand fir low-flammability.
Form
tree
Mature height
~150 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Global; New Zealand
Uses
ornamental
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence
Evidence regions
Global; New Zealand
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, ID, MT, OR, WA.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA, ID, MT, OR, WA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3b; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
Broader regional context
Federal context
How to read this page
The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.
Native and introduced range evidence
These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and
introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval.
Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.
The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.
Plant hardiness evidence
These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA
Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value
is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping
statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 15321, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
The evidence
Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself
(a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or
republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.
Mid-scale / conditional (1)
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
“Moderate flammability”
Moderate flammability classification.
Listed without a rating (13)Corroboration (13 rows from 1 source)
13 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Kelsey1979: Kelsey, R. G., Shafizadeh, F., & Lowery, D. P. (1979). Heat content of bark, twigs, and foliage of nine species of western conifers. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Research Paper INT-261. Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Ogden, Utah.
Primary study Williamson2002: Williamson, N .M., & Agee, J. K. (2002). Heat content variation of interior Pacific Northwest conifer foliage. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 11, 91-94.
