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Trailing South African daisy

Osteospermum fruticosum · Asteraceae · all Osteospermum records

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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: Fire-resistant — 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: 4 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: California; Southern California
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source

Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants · Official scoped edition
- CA; partial normalized coverage · 1997-07-01
  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: Documented in CA.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: 1 sourced range or established record; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: No hardiness value is normalized.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status: Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status: Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here: No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
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.

Form: groundcover
Grows in: CA
Rated in: California; Southern California
Family: Asteraceae
Evidence: 5 cited sources

Conditions in the fire evidence

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

green: Fire-Retardant Plants for Brush Fire Prevention in Hillside Residential Areas evidence row, Landscape for Fire Protection evidence row

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.

Low-volume and slow-burning vegetation for planting on cl…: Table 3: Poor performance [nord-green-brushland-clearing-performance] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-Retardant Plants for Brush Fire Prevention in Hillsi…: Category 2 [la-arboretum-1970-leaf-moisture-fire-retardance] (with its recommendation)
Landscape for Fire Protection: irrigated hillsides [maire-1968-fire-protection-landscape] (with its recommendation)
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interf…: Chapter 4, Landscape Vegetation Database [ucfpl-1997] (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.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Living More Safely in the Chaparral-Urban Interface — USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station (Klaus W. H. Radtke) · General Technical Report PSW-67 · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: la-arboretum-tree

“Medium to high — African daisy”

Table 5 rates this low-growing southern California landscape entry by fuel volume, inherent plant flammability, and ease of fire spread.

Listed without a rating (1)

Low-volume and slow-burning vegetation for planting on clearings in California chaparral — USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station · PSW-124 · original source Primary evidence Field program

“Poor performance”

Trailing South African daisy is printed in Table 3's “Poor performance” section.

Last verified 2026-08-25. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF ·

Osteospermum fruticosum (Trailing South African daisy). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/osteospermum-fruticosum/. Last verified 2026-08-25.