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Mescal bean is rated fire resistant, although the published support is limited.
All three practical assessments point in the same favorable direction, with no conflicting finding among them.
Diputació de Girona and Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya recommend the plant under the name Dermatophyllum secundiflorum. Species-specific care is assumed in their garden-suitability judgment, which combines fire-service experience and fire research with maintenance, fuel structure, origin, and invasiveness. The University of Arizona’s extension service requires irrigation and maintenance for its fire-resistant recommendation of Texas mountain laurel, Sophora secundiflora. It also warns that these plants are not fireproof. The Sun City Texas Firewise Group gives it a low flammability-hazard rating, meaning it is considered less likely to burn at high temperatures for a prolonged period.
These judgments address fire performance from somewhat different practical angles, so their agreement is useful. It does not mean the tree cannot ignite or that care can be neglected. Mescal bean is hardy to USDA zone 7b. This tree in the bean family has moderate water needs and grows to about 15 feet at maturity. The sound conclusion is that it is a fire-resistant landscape choice when properly irrigated and maintained, but not a substitute for routine vegetation care.
Form
tree
Mature height
~15 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Catalonia, Spain; Georgetown, Texas; Yavapai County, Arizona
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
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 AZ, NM, TX.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7b; 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.
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: PlantCharacteristics record 82539, 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.
Guía de pirojardinería: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Plant Guide: Small Trees [Sun City plant-table sections] (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.
Dermatophyllum secundiflorum 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.
Listed as Texas mountain laurel — Sophora secundiflora. The bulletin says fire-resistant plants tend to resist ignition when irrigated and maintained, while fire-prone plants may ignite readily and burn intensely.
The table rates Mountain Laurel, Texas — Sophora secundiflora low for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
