Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 5–7.
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.
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.
5–7 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Alnus cordata · exact match.
Source location: Table 1, tree row.
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.
“considered wildfire-resistant and are recommended for Michigan’s climate”
Table 1 row: Alnus cordata (Italian alder).
Mid-scale / conditional (1)
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
