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Silverberry has two favorable listings, but their qualifications do not support a firm fire-resistant verdict.
FireSmart BC calls silverberry a FireSmart-approved fire-resistant plant while also flagging it as needing more research. That combination points toward approval, but with uncertainty still attached. The organization’s chart is compiled guidance for choosing plants and locating them within home ignition zones, so its research flag deserves as much attention as its favorable label.
Alaska’s forestry program also includes silverberry among plants that may be used in firewise landscapes if placed and maintained appropriately. Its guidance is expert-curated and conditional: the plant’s inclusion does not separate silverberry from the way it is positioned and cared for. Together, the two sources offer practical support, but neither settles the question strongly enough to produce a clear fire-resistant verdict.
Silverberry is a low-water shrub in the Elaeagnaceae family, reaching about 12 feet at maturity. It is native across broad parts of northern and western North America and hardy to USDA zone 3a. Those traits identify the plant and its growing range, but they do not establish how it burns. For landscaping near a home, silverberry is a cautiously supported choice whose placement and maintenance remain part of the firewise judgment.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~12 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
Alaska; British Columbia
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Alaska Division of Forestry opens with the wildfire threat to Alaskans and publishes Alaska firewise-landscape examples. FireApproved publishes 58 exact source owners from its 60 taxon entries and holds the taxon-free fern label. State publication scope does not establish suitability for every Alaska climate, site, or home-ignition-zone placement.
Current cited native range in AK, CA, CO, ID, MN, MT, ND, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY.
Introduced / established
2 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3a; 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 86994, 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.
Protect Your Home from Wildfire: Shrubs [Alaska DNR brochure sections] (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.
