Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Pacific madrone is often presented as fire resistant, but the available findings do not yet support a firm yes.
FireSmart BC calls it an approved fire-resistant plant while also flagging it for more research. California compilations are favorable too: the University of California Forest Products Laboratory found recommendations from three references, and the Diablo Firesafe Council placed madrone among plants rated favorably by at least three references. Those judgments are useful for plant selection, but the California sources caution that many underlying lists lacked a scientific basis and used undefined ranking terms.
A laboratory measurement adds detail without resolving the verdict. In one burning-bench test, predried Pacific madrone litter flamed for 62 seconds. That number describes how long the tested litter burned under those conditions. Without a threshold for resistance, it does not say that 62 seconds is safe or unsafe, and it does not measure how a living tree performs near a wildfire.
Pacific madrone is a low-water tree that reaches about 80 feet at maturity. The practical conclusion is cautious: several plant guides favor it, but their recommendations rest largely on compiled lists, while the measured result carries no resistant-or-flammable cutoff. Pacific madrone may be a reasonable candidate for a fire-conscious landscape, but it should not be treated as conclusively fire resistant.
Form
tree
Mature height
~80 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
British Columbia; California; Global
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
The guide presents itself as fire performance ratings for common landscape plants in a fire-prone California setting. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as republished California context. It is not an independent rating, a current endorsement, or parcel suitability.
The UC Forest Products Laboratory says the guide covers properties of common California landscaping plants and was prepared for California fire agencies. FireApproved publishes 130 exact owners at historical California publication scope. The report is a 1997 compilation, not a current endorsement, site rating, or independent test of every row.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA, OR, WA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 8a; 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 64849, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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.
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interf…: Chapter 4, Landscape Vegetation Database [ucfpl-1997] (with its recommendation)
Fire Performance of Common Plants: Table 1 (favorable in 3 or more references) [diablo-guide-to-plants-three-reference-vote] (with its recommendation)
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.
Fire Performance of Common Plants (Guide to Plants) — Diablo Firesafe Council · live page captured 2026-08-29 · original sourceCorroborationMirrorlineage: ucfpl-berkeley resolves to Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants
“Table 1: favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references (refs 11,15,17)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Arbutus menziesii (Madrone) as tree, evergreen, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 3 of its 57 numbered references for this row (11,15,17). The guide states the ranking terms in its underlying references were mostly undefined and makes no attempt to rank within the list, and that fire performance is compromised without maintenance.
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 Varner2017: Varner, J. M., Kuljian, H. G., & Kreye, J. K. (2017). Fires without tanoak: the effects of a non-native disease on future community flammability. Biological Invasions, 19, 2307-2317.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Varner2017-1; sampling ND.
