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Texas barometer bush is not clearly fire resistant; Texas sources place it between medium hazard and avoidance near a structure.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension lists Texas sage, or cenizo, among plants to avoid within 30 feet of a structure. Its guidance says these Zone 1 plants should instead be restricted to zones 2 or 3. That is a clear landscaping warning, although it does not describe the shrub as highly flammable.
The Sun City Texas Firewise Group gives the same species a “medium” flammability-hazard rating. Its measure concerns how readily a plant burns for a prolonged time at high temperatures, while its five-foot building warning applies to plants rated above medium. That leaves the shrub below this warning threshold but outside the low and very-low categories.
The two findings do not support treating this South-Central U.S. native shrub as reliably fire resistant. For placement near a home, the stronger practical guidance is Texas A&M’s instruction to keep it out of the first 30-foot zone.
Form
shrub
Rated in
Austin, Texas; Georgetown, Texas
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14
The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.
Travis County, Austin area (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2024-01-16
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension publishes this page through its Travis County horticulture program. FireApproved publishes 56 exact owners and retains the source's zone and warning conditions. This is county/Austin regional context, not a second statewide Texas table or site clearance.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in TX.
Native range
Current cited native range in TX.
Introduced / established
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.
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.
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.
Firewise Landscaping: Small Shrubs [Travis County Firewise page sections] (with its avoid rating)
Firewise Plant Guide: Shrubs [Sun City plant-table sections] (mid-scale rating)
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.
“Plants to Avoid for Zone 1 (within 30′ of Structure)”
Listed as Sage, Texas (Cenizo) — Leucophyllum frutescens. The page says Zone 1 entries should be restricted to zones 2 or 3; all-zone entries are highly flammable due to volatile oils or growth habit.
The table rates Sage, Texas (Cenizo) — Leucophyllum frutescens medium for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
