Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, spirea is broadly rated fire resistant, though it still needs irrigation and maintenance to resist ignition.
All six published recommendations favor spirea. The extension services of Oregon State, Washington State, and the University of Idaho list it as fire resistant, while Oregon State’s educational gallery recommends Spiraea species for fire-resistant landscapes. Arizona’s Yavapai County extension service recommends spirea with a condition: fire-resistant plants need irrigation and maintenance to help resist ignition. Valencia’s regional government recommends spirea as a low-flammability shrub for gardens near wildland.
FireSmart BC approves spirea as a fire-resistant plant but flags it as needing more research. That caveat tempers the certainty without reversing the practical conclusion. These sources use recommendation lists rather than a shared numerical test, yet their agreement spans the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, South Carolina, British Columbia, and Mediterranean Spain.
Spirea is a shrub in the rose family, listed for USDA zones 3a through 8b. It is a sound choice for a fire-conscious landscape, provided “fire resistant” is not mistaken for fireproof and the plant is kept irrigated and maintained as Arizona’s guidance requires.
Form
shrub
Rated in
British Columbia; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); South Carolina +2
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
British Columbia; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); South Carolina; Valencia, Spain / western Mediterranean; Yavapai County, Arizona
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources
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.
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 3–8.
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.
3–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Spiraea spp. · exact match.
Source location: Spirea profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
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.
Landscaping Can Be Attractive & FIREWISE: SHRUBS [SCFC Fire Smart plant-form 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.
Listed as Spirea — Spiraea 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.
