Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Lavender cotton is rated fire resistant, although FireSmart BC flags it as needing more research.
Six institutions place the plant on the favorable side. FireSmart BC calls it FireSmart-approved despite its research flag. Fire Safe Marin lists it as fire resistant, Michigan State University Extension considers it wildfire resistant for Michigan, and Oregon State University Extension recommends it for Willamette Valley growing conditions. Their conclusions cover different regions and use different methods, so agreement does not make any one judgment universal.
Two California field trials add detail. The USDA Forest Service reported good field performance for gray lavender cotton on southern California brushland clearings, where suitability involved factors beyond flammability alone. The Los Angeles State and County Arboretum placed it in Category 3 among its recommended low-growing plants. That category means 70 to 80 percent leaf moisture capacity under normal garden conditions, below the Arboretum’s two higher categories but still within its recommended set.
Lavender cotton is a groundcover in the aster family that reaches about one foot at maturity. The findings favor using it as a fire-resistant choice, with the FireSmart BC flag leaving a reason for caution. For plants listed as fire resistant by Fire Safe Marin, irrigation and removal of dead material remain necessary alongside proper placement and spacing.
Form
groundcover
Mature height
~1 ft
Rated in
Austin, Texas; British Columbia; California; Georgetown, Texas +5
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
The guide presents itself as fire performance ratings for common landscape plants in a fire-prone California setting. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as republished California context. It is not an independent rating, a current endorsement, or parcel suitability.
Marin County (CA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2019-01-01
The publication is explicitly limited to plants common to Marin County. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as Marin regional context while retaining its placement, spacing, irrigation, and maintenance boundary. It is not statewide California guidance or parcel suitability.
The UC Forest Products Laboratory says the guide covers properties of common California landscaping plants and was prepared for California fire agencies. FireApproved publishes 130 exact owners at historical California publication scope. The report is a 1997 compilation, not a current endorsement, site rating, or independent test of every row.
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.
Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14
The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.
Travis County, Austin area (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2024-01-16
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension publishes this page through its Travis County horticulture program. FireApproved publishes 56 exact owners and retains the source's zone and warning conditions. This is county/Austin regional context, not a second statewide Texas table or site clearance.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, DC, DE, GA, LA, MA, MD, NC, NJ, OH, PA, SC, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
9 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.
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.
Source location: Cold Hardiness Zone field in the recovered selector record.
Not used for comparison: The recovered selector prints one Cold Hardiness Zone value but does not define it as a minimum threshold or a one-zone range.
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.
Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector: Landscape Zone 2 — 5–10 ft from the structure; maintained lawn or fuel breaks, with easily ignited evergreens avoided [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Low-volume and slow-burning vegetation for planting on cl…: Table 3: Good performance [nord-green-brushland-clearing-performance] (with its recommendation)
Fire-Retardant Plants for Brush Fire Prevention in Hillsi…: Category 3 [la-arboretum-1970-leaf-moisture-fire-retardance] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Cotton Lavender profile (PDF page 121) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interf…: Chapter 4, Landscape Vegetation Database [ucfpl-1997] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping: Ground Cover; High Flammability Plants to Consider Avoiding for all Zones [Travis County Firewise page sections] (with its avoid rating)
Firewise Plant Guide: Groundcover [Sun City plant-table sections] (with its recommendation)
Fire Performance of Common Plants: Table 1 (favorable in 3 or more references) [diablo-guide-to-plants-three-reference-vote] (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.
“CATEGORY 3 — Plants with medium-high leaf moisture content capacity (70-80%)”
· condition: green
Santolina chamaecyparissus (Gray Lavender Cotton) is one of 30 low-growing plants in the source's recommended Table 1. The category reflects leaf moisture capacity under normal garden conditions at the Arboretum.
The table rates Santolina (Lavender Cotton) — Santolina chamaecyparissus low for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
Fire Performance of Common Plants (Guide to Plants) — Diablo Firesafe Council · live page captured 2026-08-29 · original sourceCorroborationMirrorlineage: ucfpl-berkeley resolves to Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants
“Table 1: favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references (refs 7,9,10,17,23,24,25,32,36,37,40,41, 42,53)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Santolina chamaecyparissus (Santolina, Lavender, Gray lavender) as shrub, evergreen, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 14 of its 57 numbered references for this row (7,9,10,17,23,24,25,32,36,37,40,41, 42,53). The guide states the ranking terms in its underlying references were mostly undefined and makes no attempt to rank within the list, and that fire performance is compromised without maintenance.
“High Flammability Plants to Consider Avoiding for all Zones”
Listed as Santolina (Lavender Cotton) — Santolina chamaecyparissus; Santolina — Santolina chamaecyparissus. The page says Zone 1 entries should be restricted to zones 2 or 3; all-zone entries are highly flammable due to volatile oils or growth habit.
