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 AZ, CA, HI, NM, NV, TX, UT.
Native range
Introduced / established
9 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7b; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
2 ecological invasive reports.
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.
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.
Low-volume and slow-burning vegetation for planting on cl…: Table 3: Fair performance [nord-green-brushland-clearing-performance] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-Retardant Plants for Brush Fire Prevention in Hillsi…: Category 3 [la-arboretum-1970-leaf-moisture-fire-retardance] (with its recommendation)
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.
“CATEGORY 3 — Plants with medium-high leaf moisture content capacity (70-80%)”
· condition: green
Atriplex semibaccata (Creeping Australian Saltbush) is one of 30 low-growing plants in the source's recommended Table 1. The category reflects leaf moisture capacity under normal garden conditions at the Arboretum.
Table 5 rates this low-growing southern California landscape entry by fuel volume, inherent plant flammability, and ease of fire spread.
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 7,10,11,13,21,23,24,27,28,35,36,37, 40,41,42)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Atriplex semibaccata (Saltbush) as shrub, evergreen, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 15 of its 57 numbered references for this row (7,10,11,13,21,23,24,27,28,35,36,37, 40,41,42). 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.
