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European hackberry is rated fire resistant, supported by favorable assessments from Valencia, Catalonia and Israel.
The Generalitat Valenciana recommends it as a low-flammability tree for wildland-urban-interface gardens. The Diputació de Girona and Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya rate it “muy recomendada,” the most favorable of five garden-suitability verdicts. Their method assumes species-specific care and weighs fire-resistance research, fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness and fire-service experience. That rating is broader than flammability alone, but it still supports planting the species in fire-aware gardens.
Ecology and Environment / ISEES names European hackberry as less flammable than pines for high, shading groves in public-use forest areas and along access roads. This is a comparison with pines in a particular planting setting, not a universal claim about every fire situation.
Dryad’s FLAMITS database supplies a separate ignitability measurement. Live, un-dried leaves sampled from July through August had a time to flaming of 11.25 seconds under an epiradiator. The database sets no common threshold that turns this result into a resistant or flammable verdict, so the number describes the tested leaves and conditions rather than classifying the whole tree. Taken together, the favorable assessments place European hackberry on the fire-resistant side, while the measured result remains useful context rather than the basis of that classification.
Form
tree
Rated in
Catalonia, Spain; Global; Israel; Valencia, Spain / western Mediterranean
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Catalonia, Spain; Global; Israel; Valencia, Spain / western Mediterranean
Maintenance
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
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.
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.
Guía de pirojardinería: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its recommendation)
השרפה בהרי יהודה – 2021: ניתוח: recommendations, treatment of public-use forest areas [judean-hills-2021-less-flammable-than-pine] (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.
Celtis australis is rated “MUY RECOMENDADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
“מיני עצים דליקים פחות מאורנים, כדוגמת — Celtis australis”
The authors name this exact species as an example of a tree less flammable than pines for high, shading groves in public-use forest areas and their access roads.
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 Petriccione2006: Petriccione, M. (2006). Infiammabilità della lettiera di diverse specie vegetali di ambiente mediterráneo. Tesi Di Dottorato. Università Degli Studi Di Napoli Federico II.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Petriccione2006-1; sampling july to august.
