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Burrobush’s measured litter-burning rate does not establish that the shrub is fire resistant.
FLAMITS, published through Dryad and Global Ecology and Biogeography, reports a burning spread rate of 0.12 centimetres per second for predried burrobush litter tested on a burning bench. That figure describes how quickly burning spread through the prepared material under those test conditions. It is a specific measurement, with a narrower meaning than a fire-resistance rating.
The distinction matters because spread is only one part of flammability. Measuring how quickly burning travels through litter does not measure how readily a living shrub ignites. Across its five flammability dimensions, FLAMITS preserves the experimental context attached to each measurement. The spread rate therefore cannot be translated into a resistant or hazardous grade simply by looking at the number.
Burrobush, Ambrosia dumosa, is a low-water shrub in the aster family, native to the southwestern United States and reaching about two feet at maturity. Those characteristics describe the plant a gardener would be choosing; they do not turn its litter measurement into a fire-resistance recommendation. Choosing burrobush specifically for fire resistance would require a broader judgment than this bench measurement supports.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~2 ft
Water need
low
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 AZ, CA, NV, UT.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CA, NV, UT.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; 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 31502, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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 (8)Corroboration (8 rows from 1 source)
8 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Fuentes2016: Fuentes-Ramirez, A., Veldman, J. W., Holzapfel, C., & Moloney, K. A. (2016). Spreaders, igniters, and burning shrubs: plant flammability explains novel fire dynamics in grass-invaded deserts. Ecological Applications, 26, 2311-2322.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Fuentes2016-2; sampling june to july.
