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Silver wattle is not fire resistant: five sources across three continents rate it highly flammable, and only one Australian group disagrees.
The imbalance reflects a different question, not a mistake.
Tasmania Fire Service places it in the highest of its three flammability groups, kept out of the zone around a house. Fire and Emergency New Zealand's shoot-flammability testing scores it moderate-to-high, and it appears on the country's high-flammability weeds list too. INRA's epiradiator testing in Provence gives it an inflammability note of four out of five for the July-through-September fire season, one step below the maximum the same testing recorded later in the year. Two Chilean lab studies agree: a paper in the International Journal of Wildland Fire measured a mean leaf flash point of 317 degrees Celsius, flagged as imprecise, and placed the species in the most hazardous of five heat-release classes; a paper in IJERPH ignited all fifty live-leaf samples it tested, in under ten seconds on average.
Set against that is a single classification from the Australian Plants Society Victoria, which calls silver wattle fire-retardant: it resists the first wave of a bushfire but may still burn once dried out. That is a narrower claim than the lab tests answer, describing how the plant meets an advancing flame front rather than how readily its leaves ignite. The other five results measure closer to that second question, and on it they agree.
Silver wattle is a tree in the Fabaceae family, introduced to California and Oregon and flagged as invasive in one jurisdiction. Weighed against a single field classification, the lab and government findings leave it firmly on the keep-away side.
Australian Capital Territory, Australia; Catalonia, Spain; Global; Mediterranean France / Provence; New Zealand; Peñuelas Lake National Reserve, Valparaíso, Chile; Tasmania, Australia; Victoria, Australia
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, OR.
Native range
Introduced / established
2 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
1 ecological invasive report.
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.
Conditions in the fire evidence
These describe tested or rated plant material. They are not horticultural maintenance instructions.
Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating.
They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.
Fire Resisting Garden Plants for the Urban Fringe and Rur…: remove from the Building Protection Zone; avoid in the Fuel Modified Zone [Texas Building Protection Zone] (with its avoid rating)
Guía de pirojardinería: prohibited as a regulated invasive plant; not a fire-suitability verdict [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (mid-scale rating)
Canberra Plant Selector: filtered result page 18 [canberra-selector] (with its recommendation)
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.
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
“Moderate/high flammability”
Moderate/high flammability classification. On FENZ's high-flammability environmental weeds list (2024 DOC list).
Acacia dealbata is rated “PROHIBIDA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
15 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Cui2020a: Cui, X., Paterson, A. M., Wyse, S. V., Alam, M. A., Maurin, K. J. L., Pieper, R., ... Curran, T. J. (2020a). Shoot flammability of vascular plants is phylogenetically conserved and related to habitat fire-proneness and growth form. Nature Plants, 6, 355-359.
Shared row context: plant part branches; fuel all; predrying yes; device grill; site Cui2020a-1; sampling ND.
“ignition frequency (%): 100”
FLAMITS record 1321; Ignitability measurement.
“maximum sample temperature (°C): 673.7”
FLAMITS record 1515; Combustibility measurement.
“burning duration (s): 41.7”
FLAMITS record 1709; Sustainability measurement.
“estimated burnt biomass (%): 86.7”
FLAMITS record 1903; Consumability measurement.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 5248.32”
FLAMITS record 2923; Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Dickinson1985-1; sampling winter. Primary study Dickinson1985: Dickinson, K. J. M., & Kirkpatrick, J. B. (1985). The flammability and energy content of some important plant-species and fuel components in the forests of Southeastern Tasmania. Journal of Biogeography, 12, 121-134.
Primary study Guerrero2021: Guerrero, F., Hernández, C., Toledo, M., Espinoza, L., Carrasco, Y., Arriagada, A., ... Carmona, C. (2021). Leaf thermal and chemical properties as natural drivers of plant flammability of native and exotic tree species of the valparaíso region, Chile. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18, 7191.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Guerrero2021-1; sampling summer.
Primary study Valette1990: Valette, J.-C. (1990). Flammabilities of Mediterranean forest species. Effects on the combustibility of the forest communities inflammabilités des espèces forestières méditerranéennes. Conséquences sur la combustibilité des formations forestières. Revue forestière française, 42, 76-92.
Shared row context: Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Valette1990-1; sampling june to september.
“flammability value: 3”
FLAMITS record 13336.
“flammability value: 4”
FLAMITS record 13337.
Primary study Rossa2016: Rossa, C. G., Veloso, R., & Fernandes, P. M. (2016). A laboratory-based quantification of the effect of live fuel moisture content on fire spread rate. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 25, 569-573.
Shared row context: plant part stems; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Rossa2016-1.
“rate of burning spread (cm/s): 1.386568627”
FLAMITS record 16612; Sustainability measurement; sampling march and june 2014.
“flame height (cm): 122.3529412”
FLAMITS record 16613; Combustibility measurement; sampling march and june 2015.
