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African-lily is classified as highly flammable and does not belong near structures, despite an Australian recommendation for one named cultivar.
The Girona provincial government and Catalonia’s fire service rate Agapanthus praecox “desaconsejada,” or discouraged. Their garden-suitability method considers fire research and firefighters’ experience alongside fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and species-specific care. This is broader than a laboratory ignition test and is directly about the species in question.
The apparent disagreement comes from Ozbreed, which places Queen Mum™ Agapanthus orientalis ‘PMN06’ on its strongest recommendation list, reserved for plants supported by scientific evidence or longstanding use as fire breaks. That finding concerns a particular named cultivar, while the adverse Catalan rating concerns Agapanthus praecox. The two sources also ask different questions, so the cultivar’s listing does not clear African-lily as a species.
A primary experiment adds a narrower measurement: pre-dried branches recorded an ignition frequency of 7.4 percent when tested on a grill. The FLAMITS database preserves that result without assigning a universal threshold across different methods, fuels, and plant parts. It therefore describes what happened under those test conditions rather than issuing garden advice. Overall, African-lily is classified as highly flammable, and the prudent placement is away from structures.
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
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.
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.
Guía de pirojardinería: not suitable inside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its avoid rating)
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.
Agapanthus praecox is rated “DESACONSEJADA” 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.
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 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.
