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Black hawthorn is rated fire resistant, though the practical case rests more on two Catalan recommendations than on a single laboratory number.
The 2020 guidance from Diputació de Girona and Catalonia’s fire service rates black hawthorn “recommended” on a five-level garden-suitability scale. Species-specific care is a condition of the recommendation. Origin and invasiveness also enter the garden-suitability judgment, alongside fuel structure, maintenance, published fire research and fire-service experience.
Diputació de Barcelona and CREAF reach a similar practical conclusion for perimeter protection strips. Their 2025 guidance names Rhamnus lycioides among the less-flammable species that managers should preserve first while creating and maintaining those strips. This recommendation concerns vegetation management around wildfire protection areas, not a promise that the plant cannot burn.
The numerical result is narrower. In May sampling recorded by FLAMITS, live black hawthorn twigs that had been predried took 42 seconds to produce flame under an epiradiator. That measures ignition time for that material under those test conditions. Because the database sets no common threshold across different plant parts, devices, and flammability measurements, 42 seconds does not establish a resistance category by itself. Taken together, the guidance supports treating this Rhamnaceae shrub as fire resistant, but the primary experimental support remains limited.
Form
shrub
Region
Spain
Rated in
Catalonia, Spain; Global
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its recommendation)
Les franges perimetrals de protecció contra els incendis …: page 4 species-selection panel [catalonia-perimeter-strip-maintain-remove] (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.
Rhamnus lycioides is rated “RECOMENDADA” 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.