United States / Grow / European alder

European alder (Alnus glutinosa)
Photo: (c) Douglas Goldman, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) (CC BY-SA), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

European alder

Alnus glutinosa · Betulaceae · all Alnus records · Wikipedia

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Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Alnus glutinosa has 3 legal-list rows for IN, ME, and MA in local regulatory evidence. Its fire pack is limited evidence on the evidence table; 1 ecological invasive report and 2 hardiness assertions remain separate, with the latter in hardiness evidence.

For European alder, range evidence supplies distribution context, while related plants and the genus index support comparison and browsing. These routes do not enlarge the accepted fire pack. The glutinosa account keeps legal geography, ecological status, source depth, and paired hardiness statements attached to their own evidence roles rather than treating one as proof of another.

Form
tree
Mature height
~50 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Catalonia, Spain; Global; eastern US; southern Idaho / Intermountain
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Catalonia, Spain; Global; eastern US; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database · Official scoped edition
    • Southern Idaho (ID footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2013-11-08

      The official database labels itself "For Southern Idaho" and describes Idaho residents at the urban-rangeland interface. FireApproved publishes 419 existing plant owners that cite its scored rows. This bounded Southern Idaho scope is regional context, not statewide coverage or a conclusion that the score transfers unchanged to every Idaho site.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in CT, DC, DE, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MS, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Introduced / established
16 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5a; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
3 legal-list records; the Place chip matches exact scope.
Reported invasive here
1 ecological invasive report.
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.

Current native

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

16

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

16 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Wisconsin (WI)

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.

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.

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.

Recommends (1)

Mid-scale / conditional (2)

Listed without a rating (1)
Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
  • FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database — Dryad / Global Ecology and Biogeography · Dryad version 9 · original source Corroboration Trait database lineage: meta-aggregator

    “calorific value (kcal/kg): 5039.65”

    FLAMITS record 3925; Combustibility measurement; plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Gillon1997-1; sampling june to september. Primary study Gillon1997: Gillon, D., Hernando, C., Valette, J.-C., & Joffre, R. (1997). Fast estimation of the calorific values of forest fuels by near infrared-reflectance spectroscopy. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 27, 760-765.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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Alnus glutinosa (European alder). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/alnus-glutinosa/. Last verified 2026-08-23.