Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, willow is rated fire resistant by six extension and wildfire-safety programs.
Every source places willow or Salix species among plants approved or recommended for firewise or fire-resistant landscaping, so the findings land firmly on the resistant side.
Willow appears on the joint fire-resistant plant list from OSU, WSU, and University of Idaho Extension. It also carries FireSmart BC’s fire-resistant approval. University of Tennessee Extension and the LSU AgCenter include willow in Firewise landscaping guidance. King County Forestry Program lists Salix species among fire-resistant landscape plants. These recommendations cover OR/WA/ID, British Columbia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Utah, and western Washington without disagreement.
Utah State University Extension supplies the main qualification: Salix species can be firewise when properly used and maintained. That condition belongs specifically to Utah State’s finding; the other sources list or approve willow under their own binary schemes. The joint OSU, WSU, and University of Idaho Extension source assigns willow a hardiness range of USDA zones 2a to 9b. Together, the sources support treating willow as a fire-resistant landscaping choice, with Utah State’s condition on proper use and maintenance kept intact.
Form
shrub
Rated in
British Columbia; Greece; Louisiana; Michigan / Great Lakes +10
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
British Columbia; Greece; Louisiana; Michigan / Great Lakes; Nevada / Great Basin; OR/WA/ID; Oregon; Oregon (Willamette Valley); Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); South Carolina; Tennessee; Utah / Intermountain West; Yavapai County, Arizona; western WA
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 10 scopes across 10 cited fire sources
King County's current wildfire page links this list for the Puget Sound Basin. FireApproved publishes 82 exact source owners as basin context, not statewide Washington guidance or a site-specific recommendation.
LSU AgCenter calls these 31 ornamentals commonly used in Louisiana and recommended for Louisiana firewise landscaping efforts. FireApproved publishes 31 exact source owners, mostly at the source's genus grain. Undocumented curation remains corroborative and is not site suitability.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
Willamette Valley (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-02-01
OSU Extension says EM 9103 highlights fire-resistant plants that thrive under Willamette Valley growing conditions. FireApproved publishes 172 exact owners only as valley context. The guide shares the PNW 590 lineage and is not a second independent vote or statewide site clearance.
The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.
South Carolina Forestry Commission publishes this explicitly as its Fire Smart Plant List for South Carolina. FireApproved publishes 63 exact genus owners from 72 unique common-name labels; unsafe common-name mappings and duplicates are not broadened. The brochure calls the list non-inclusive and does not establish species-level or site-specific suitability.
University of Nevada Cooperative Extension compiled plants suited to Nevada climate zones and reported favorably by at least two upstream firewise lists. FireApproved publishes 126 exact source owners at Nevada publication scope. The source explicitly makes no independent flammability determination, so these rows remain corroborative.
Utah State University Extension states that this fact sheet selects examples for Utah landscapes and that they require proper placement and maintenance. FireApproved publishes 83 exact source owners at Utah publication scope. The table is not a site-specific planting clearance.
University of Tennessee Extension SP685 is Tennessee landscape guidance and publishes 78 represented plant owners. Most table rows are a carrier of Virginia Firescapes rather than an independent rating; Tennessee source scope does not change that lineage or establish site suitability.
Yavapai County (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2025-03-14
University of Arizona Cooperative Extension authors Bulletin 34 for Yavapai County. FireApproved publishes 198 exact source owners from its resistant and prone tables and keeps the county boundary visible. County publication scope is regional Arizona context, never statewide scope.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 2–9.
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.
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.
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.
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ extended zone (30-100 m) [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes: Oregon [osu-frn6-oregon-regions] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Willow profile (PDF page 183) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
Landscaping Can Be Attractive & FIREWISE: TREES [SCFC Fire Smart plant-form sections] (with its recommendation)
Κανονισμός Πυροπροστασίας Ακινήτων εντός ή πλησίον δασικώ…: section 5.4.2, paragraph following Table 2δi [greece-2023-fire-resistant-examples] (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 Plant Materials for Oregon”
· condition: green
Salix species (Willow) is listed under “Trees—deciduous”. The guide says most listed plants require some irrigation during Oregon's dry summer months and must be maintained in a healthy condition.
Listed as Willow — Salix sp.. The bulletin says fire-resistant plants tend to resist ignition when irrigated and maintained, while fire-prone plants may ignite readily and burn intensely.
