Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Spreading snakeroot’s measured leaf ignition time does not establish that the shrub is fire resistant.
Live leaves tested in a muffle furnace without being dried first began flaming after 13.31 seconds, according to the FLAMITS database.
Time to flaming describes how long the tested material takes to begin flaming under the test conditions. It is an ignitability measurement, not a rating of how a whole shrub will behave in a garden fire. FLAMITS preserves the experimental context alongside its measurements and does not impose a single threshold across unlike tests.
For a planting decision, treat the result as a measured leaf trait rather than an endorsement. Spreading snakeroot, Ageratina riparia, is a shrub in the Asteraceae family, introduced in Hawaii and flagged invasive in two jurisdictions. Its invasive status is a separate consideration from ignition, but it also deserves attention before choosing the plant.
Form
shrub
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 HI.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
1 legal-list record; the Place chip matches exact scope.
Seed-list status
2 state noxious-weed seed records; the Place chip matches exact scope.
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.
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 (1)Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
FLAMITS record 9656; Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device muffle furnace; site Murray2013-1; sampling march to april. Primary study Murray2013: Murray, B. R., Hardstaff, L. K., & Phillips, M. L. (2013). Differences in leaf flammability, leaf traits and flammability-trait relationships between native and exotic plant species of dry sclerophyll forest. PLoS One, 8, e79205.
