Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Beach strawberry is rated fire resistant, with guidance that links its low groundcover growth to regular cutting back.
Montana State's fire-resistant plant list names Fragaria chiloensis as beach strawberry. Michigan State uses wild strawberry for the same scientific name and includes it among plants recommended for Michigan's climate. The botanical name keeps those regional selections connected despite the different labels.
The University of California Forest Products Laboratory compilation describes a low, compact mat of glossy foliage. Its species entry calls for annual mowing or cutting back in early spring to encourage new growth and prevent stems from building up. It also marks the plant as not drought tolerant. A spreading strawberry bed therefore comes with a recurring task, even when its fire guidance is favorable.
The compilation draws its recommendations from earlier plant lists and notes that much of their support was anecdotal. It supplies planting guidance rather than a common experimental rating. For a garden, the useful combination is the regional fire-resistant selection and the species-specific upkeep: maintain the mat as actively growing groundcover and keep its accumulated stems under control.
Form
perennial
Mature height
~0.8 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
California; Marin County, California; Michigan / Great Lakes; Montana / Northern Rockies
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — 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.
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.
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.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
The April 2022 MontGuide explicitly presents fire-resistant species adapted to Montana. FireApproved publishes 92 exact plant records from the source while retaining excluded genus, family, and unresolved rows; the guide itself says not every listed species grows in every part of the state.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AK, CA, HI, MI, NY, OR, WA.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA, HI, OR, WA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.
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.
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 7,8,9,10,11,23,25,28,35,36,39,40, 41,53)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Fragaria chiloensis (Wild strawberry, Sand strawberry, ornamental) as groundcover, evergreen, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 14 of its 57 numbered references for this row (7,8,9,10,11,23,25,28,35,36,39,40, 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.
