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California buckeye has favorable fire-performance ratings, but the available evidence does not establish that it is fire resistant.
The University of California Forest Products Laboratory's 1997 compilation drew on three references recommending California buckeye for high-fire-risk areas. The Diablo Firesafe Council lists the deciduous tree under favorable fire performance in its guide.
The weakness lies in the underlying ratings. The university compiled more than 25 earlier plant lists and warned that many lacked a scientific basis and used terms that were never defined. Agreement among those references is useful screening information, yet it cannot show how California buckeye behaves under a specific fire exposure.
California buckeye is a deciduous tree in the family Sapindaceae, reaching about 25 feet at maturity and requiring moderate water. It is native to the Southwest and hardy to USDA zone 7a. For landscaping decisions, treat it as a tree with favorable historical recommendations, not as a proven fire-resistant tree.
Form
tree
Mature height
~25 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
California
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
The guide presents itself as fire performance ratings for common landscape plants in a fire-prone California setting. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as republished California context. It is not an independent rating, a current endorsement, or parcel suitability.
The UC Forest Products Laboratory says the guide covers properties of common California landscaping plants and was prepared for California fire agencies. FireApproved publishes 130 exact owners at historical California publication scope. The report is a 1997 compilation, not a current endorsement, site rating, or independent test of every row.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, OR.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7a; 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 93129, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
Where its sources say to plant it
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.
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interf…: Chapter 4, Landscape Vegetation Database [ucfpl-1997] (with its recommendation)
Fire Performance of Common Plants: Table 1 (favorable in 3 or more references) [diablo-guide-to-plants-three-reference-vote] (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.
Fire Performance of Common Plants (Guide to Plants) — Diablo Firesafe Council · live page captured 2026-08-29 · original sourceCorroborationMirrorlineage: ucfpl-berkeley resolves to Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants
“Table 1: favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references (refs 11,15,17)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Aesculus californica (California buckeye) as tree, deciduous, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 3 of its 57 numbered references for this row (11,15,17). The guide states the ranking terms in its underlying references were mostly undefined and makes no attempt to rank within the list, and that fire performance is compromised without maintenance.
