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Geranium has conflicting fire guidance: two programs favor Pelargonium, while a Girona guide advises against it.
The adverse assessment comes from Diputació de Girona and the Catalan fire service's 2020 guide. It rates Pelargonium species desaconsejada, meaning advised against. Its qualitative method addresses garden suitability at the wildland-urban interface. Fire evidence and fire-service experience inform it alongside fuel structure, maintenance, origin, and invasiveness. Species-specific care is an assumption of that method.
The Generalitat Valenciana instead recommends Pelargonium among low-flammability plants for beds and rockeries in its garden column. FireSmart BC also lists geranium as fire resistant, though it expressly flags the plant for further research. Both findings favor the perennial without overturning the Girona recommendation.
These are opposing judgments about landscape use. A gardener should retain the Girona warning alongside the Valencian recommendation and British Columbia's qualified listing. The disagreement leaves geranium's fire resistance disputed, rather than supporting a dependable favorable answer for the whole group.
British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Valencia, Spain / western Mediterranean
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in WA, OR, ID.
Native range
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.
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.
Guía de pirojardinería: not suitable inside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its avoid 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.
Pelargonium spp. is rated “DESACONSEJADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
