FireApproved

Home / Plants / Grow / Scotch broom

Scotch broom

Cytisus scoparius · Fabaceae · all Cytisus records

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
1 condition stated in cited fire-evidence rows.
Fire ecology context
No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Global; Marin County, California; New Zealand; OR; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US; north-eastern and mid-Atlantic United States
Maintenance
No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.
Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources
  • Combustion characteristics of north-eastern USA vegetation tested in the cone calorimeter · Official scoped edition
    • Northeastern and mid-Atlantic study sites (ME, MD, MA, NY, VA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2007-08-20

      The authors collected foliage and twigs across study sites in Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, then conditioned and tested the samples in a cone calorimeter. FireApproved publishes 37 exact source owners only as multi-state laboratory context. The source does not establish that every taxon was sampled in every named state, whole-plant behavior, landscape suitability, or state planting guidance.

  • Fire-Resistant Plants Common to Marin County · Official scoped edition
    • Marin County (CA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2019-01-01

      The publication is explicitly limited to plants common to Marin County. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as Marin regional context while retaining its placement, spacing, irrigation, and maintenance boundary. It is not statewide California guidance or parcel suitability.

  • Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) · Official scoped edition
    • VA; partial normalized coverage · 2009-04-15

      Virginia Cooperative Extension's publication opens with Virginia wildfire conditions, identifies its Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force, and labels plants native to Virginia. FireApproved publishes 306 exact source owners. Publication scope does not establish parcel suitability or current endorsement of this archived 2009 list.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AK, AL, CA, CT, DC, DE, GA, HI, ID, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MT, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, SC, TN, UT, VA, WA, WV.
Native range
No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established
12 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
2 legal-list records; set a location to match exact scope.
Seed-list status
4 state noxious-weed seed records; set a location to match exact scope.
Reported invasive here
3 ecological invasive reports; set a location to distinguish exact from regional context.
Broader regional context
Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context
Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.
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.

Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius)
Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.
Form
shrub
USDA hardiness
Minimum 5b; upper limit not documented
Mature height
~7 ft
Water need
low
Grows in
AK, AL, CA, CT, DC, DE, GA, HI +20
Rated in
Global; Marin County, California; New Zealand; OR +3
Family
Fabaceae
Evidence
82 cited sources

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

11

exact source areas

Qualified

1

doubtful or extinct source row

12 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • California (CA)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Hawaii (HI)
  • Idaho (ID) doubtful location
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Oregon (OR)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Washington (WA)

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.

Conditions in the fire evidence

These describe tested or rated plant material. They are not horticultural maintenance instructions.

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)

Avoids (3)

Mid-scale / conditional (2)

Listed without a rating (76)

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

Northern elderberry
Sambucus pubens Snowberry
Symphoricarpos albus Elderberry
Sambucus canadensis Black chokeberry
Aronia melanocarpa Beaked hazelnut
Corylus cornuta Red elderberry
Sambucus racemosa

Fire-resistant shrubs listed above

Same genus in the directory · the Cytisus group page

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

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · ITIS

Cytisus scoparius (Scotch broom). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/cytisus-scoparius/. Last verified 2026-08-23.