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Snowberry appears on four Firewise plant lists, but those listings do not establish a general fire-resistance rating.
University of Arizona Cooperative Extension lists snowberry as Firewise for Arizona above 3,000 feet. Fremont County Firewise includes it among shrubs in Wyoming and describes its listed plants generally as low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist. NFPA Firewise Communities includes snowberry among fire-resistive plants for landscaping in the Black Hills of South Dakota. New Mexico’s Forestry Division marks it recommended at 5,000 through 9,000-plus feet and unknown or doubtful at 4,000 feet. The New Mexico source also assigns it medium-to-high water needs.
These are affirmative planting lists, not comparative tests showing how readily snowberry ignites or burns beside other shrubs. Arizona uses a binary listing, while the Fremont County and NFPA sources provide no comparative classes or adverse category. The New Mexico source adds useful elevation and water information, but its Firewise designation still does not supply a comparative flammability score. Snowberry therefore has support for Firewise landscaping where this regional guidance applies, yet the sources do not settle how fire resistant it is in other places or conditions.
Form
shrub
Rated in
Arizona above 3,000 feet / interior Southwest; 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.
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 (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.
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.
Arizona at or above 3,000 feet (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-12-01
AZ1289 is explicitly limited to Arizona elevations of 3,000 feet and higher. FireApproved publishes 69 exact owners as regional Arizona context, retaining every water and elevation condition. It is never promoted to statewide low-desert guidance or an independent Tier 1 vote.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
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.
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: Shrubs [black-hills-plant-form-table] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 4, Shrubs, p4-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.
The introduction describes all table entries as fire-resistive plants that can be used in landscaping.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original sourceCorroborationCompilationlineage: csu-nmsu-firewise
