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Water wattle’s live-leaf ignition delay is a measurement, not a fire-resistance rating.
FLAMITS reports 25.7 seconds to flaming for live leaves sampled in July and September and tested under an epiradiator without drying them beforehand. That measures the delay before flames appeared under the test conditions, not a period of protection you can expect from the tree during a wildfire.
The distinction matters because a number is not automatically a rating. FLAMITS preserves the experimental context and does not apply a single threshold across different kinds of flammability measurements. The ignition time therefore cannot simply be called good or bad. It describes how readily the tested leaves began flaming under that exposure; it does not measure how much heat they released after ignition or establish how a whole tree would behave in a garden.
Water wattle (Acacia retinodes) belongs to the Fabaceae family. This tree has been introduced in California and Hawaii and is flagged as invasive in two jurisdictions, a separate consideration when choosing a planting. For someone selecting trees around a home, the measured ignition delay offers useful information about the leaves, but it does not justify choosing water wattle on the strength of a fire-resistant label.
Form
tree
Rated in
Global
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
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, FL.
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
2 ecological invasive reports.
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.
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.
Listed without a rating (4)Corroboration (4 rows from 1 source)
4 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Molina2019: Molina, J., Lora, A., Prades, C., & Silva, F. R. (2019). Roadside vegetation planning and conservation: New approach to prevent and mitigate wildfires based on fire ignition potential. Forest ecology and management, 444, 163-173.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Molina2019-1; sampling july and september.
