Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Narrowleaf cottonwood is rated fire resistant, with support from regional planting lists.
All three western sources recommend it. Above 3,000 feet in Arizona, narrowleaf cottonwood appears among the FIREWISE plant materials recommended by the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. Montana State University Extension includes it among fire-resistant plants adapted to Montana. New Mexico’s Forestry Division marks suitability at 4,000 feet as unknown or doubtful, but recommends the tree from 5,000 through 9,000-plus feet and gives its water need as medium to high.
The agreement covers the interior Southwest and Northern Rockies, but it remains limited primary evidence. Arizona and New Mexico use compiled lists, while Montana’s list is expert-curated. These are practical planting recommendations with yes-or-no classifications, not measurements of ignition time, flame spread, or heat release. They support calling the tree fire resistant without proving that every specimen will behave the same under every condition.
Narrowleaf cottonwood reaches about 60 feet at maturity, so its high water needs belong in the planting decision. It is native across several western and central U.S. regions and hardy to USDA zone 4a. For a suitable western site, the regional guidance consistently favors it as a fire-resistant choice, with elevation and water needs kept in view.
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.
New Mexico Forestry Division publishes this as its FireWise Plant List for New Mexico. FireApproved accounts for all 140 printed rows and publishes 95 exact same-rank owners already represented in the directory; 29 exact taxa without an existing record, 14 unresolved spellings or higher-rank matches, one compound taxon cell, and one species row whose only apparent owner has an infraspecific printed identity remain held. Every published row retains the source's Y, N, ?, or blank elevation cells. Publication scope does not erase those elevation limits or establish suitability for every New Mexico site.
Arizona at or above 3,000 feet (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-12-01
AZ1289 is explicitly limited to Arizona elevations of 3,000 feet and higher. FireApproved publishes 69 exact owners as regional Arizona context, retaining every water and elevation condition. It is never promoted to statewide low-desert guidance or an independent Tier 1 vote.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NE, NM, NV, OR, SD, TX, UT, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CO, ID, MT, NE, NM, NV, SD, TX, UT, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4a; no upper limit is documented.
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.
Minimum 4a · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band
Exact source measurement: -28°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.
Source taxon: Populus angustifolia · source identifier match.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 67382, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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 Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 3, Trees and Large Shrubs, p3-r22 [nm-emnrd-firewise-table-row] (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.
Listed among fire-resistant plant materials for Arizona above 3,000 feet.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original sourceCorroborationCompilationlineage: csu-nmsu-firewise
“FireWise Plant List for New Mexico”
Listed as Populus angustifolia (Narrow-leaf cottonwood) in Trees and Large Shrubs. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=?, 5,000 ft=Y, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=Y, 8,000 ft=Y, 9,000+ ft=Y. Water need: M-H; sun/shade: S; mature height: 30-90’; approximate bloom: n/a.
