Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Hummingbird trumpet has favorable California plant listings, but those compiled recommendations leave its fire resistance unresolved.
The older scientific name Zauschneria californica is the useful name to look for in these sources. The University of California Forest Products Laboratory's 1997 database lists it as a perennial shrub, with six references recommending it for areas of high fire risk. This is an affirmative landscape recommendation assembled from earlier references.
Diablo Firesafe Council uses Zauschneria californica too, alongside the common names California fuschia and hummingbird flower. Its favorable table gives the supporting reference numbers as 9, 11, 17, 40, 41 and 53. A reader can follow those citations to investigate the recommendation rather than treating the table as a new experiment.
Both compilations flag problems with undefined ranking terminology; the university also found that many earlier plant lists lacked a scientific basis. Their favorable treatment makes hummingbird trumpet a documented candidate for fire-risk landscaping, while the underlying measurement and meaning remain uncertain.
Form
shrub
Rated in
California
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
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 8–10.
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.
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.
8–10 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Epilobium canum · accepted name match.
Source location: California fuchsia profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
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 9,11,17,40,41,53)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Zauschneria californica (California fuschia, Hummingbird flower) as shrub, perennial, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 6 of its 57 numbered references for this row (9,11,17,40,41,53). 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.
