peachleaf willow

Salix amygdaloides · Salicaceae · all Salix records · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Peachleaf willow has favorable Firewise listings, but the available sources do not establish a clear overall fire-resistance verdict.

Fremont County Firewise includes peachleaf willow among plants it generally describes as low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist. NFPA Firewise Communities places it among fire-resistive plants suitable for Black Hills landscaping. New Mexico’s Forestry Division also lists it as a FireWise tree or large shrub, marking 4,000 through 8,000 feet as suitable and 9,000 feet or higher as unknown or doubtful. That source gives the tree a high water need.

All three sources are compiled planting lists. Fremont County and NFPA provide neither comparative classes nor an adverse category, while New Mexico adds growing conditions rather than a comparative flammability score. Their agreement is a favorable landscaping signal, but it does not show how readily peachleaf willow ignites or how it compares with other trees under fire exposure.

Peachleaf willow is a willow-family tree reaching about 60 feet at maturity. It is hardy to USDA zone 3b and native in the southwestern, northwestern, north-central, and northeastern United States. Its listings support consideration in locally appropriate Firewise landscaping, but they do not settle a broader claim that the species is fire resistant in every setting.

Form: tree
Mature height: ~60 ft
Water need: high
Rated in: Black Hills, South Dakota; Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Black Hills, South Dakota; Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources

Firewise Plant Material for the Black Hills · Official scoped edition
- Black Hills (SD footprint); partial normalized coverage
  The page explicitly limits itself to the Black Hills, and NFPA Firewise's archived 2006 plant-list index files it under South Dakota. FireApproved publishes 47 exact genus or species owners from 48 printed rows. This is bounded Black Hills context, not statewide South Dakota coverage or a finding that a plant suits a particular site.
Fremont County Firewise Plant List · Official scoped edition
- Fremont County (WY footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-02-25
  The source identifies itself as the Fremont County Firewise Plant List. FireApproved publishes its 92 exact source owners as Fremont County regional context. No methodology, current county endorsement, statewide Wyoming scope, or site-specific suitability is inferred.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico · Official scoped edition
- NM; partial normalized coverage · 2003-10-08
  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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AZ, CO, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SD, TX, UT, WA, WI, WY.
Native range: Current cited native range in AZ, CO, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SD, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness: Documented minimum 3b; 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.

Current native

28

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

28 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Arizona (AZ)
Colorado (CO)
Iowa (IA)
Idaho (ID)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Montana (MT)
North Dakota (ND)
Nebraska (NE)
New Mexico (NM)
Nevada (NV)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Oregon (OR)
Pennsylvania (PA)
South Dakota (SD)
Texas (TX)
Utah (UT)
Vermont (VT)
Washington (WA)
Wisconsin (WI)
Wyoming (WY)

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.

USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record SAAM2 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -33°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Salix amygdaloides · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 67526, 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 Material for the Black Hills: Large shrubs & trees [black-hills-plant-form-table] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 3, Trees and Large Shrubs, p3-r30 [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.

Fire-resistant trees instead

boxelder
Acer negundo

honeylocust
Gleditsia triacanthos

smooth sumac
Rhus glabra

quaking aspen
Populus tremuloides

Lombardy poplar
Populus nigra 'Italica'

common hackberry
Celtis occidentalis

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

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Salix amygdaloides (Peachleaf Willow). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/salix-amygdaloides/. Last verified 2026-08-25.