Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Valette's 1990 shoot study gives the strongest laboratory category recorded for common thyme, Thymus vulgaris. Its summer maximum was note 5 on the INRA 0–5 scale, and the original description was “extrêmement inflammable.”
One bed-and-rockery source is internally mixed, recommending thyme there while also warning that it is resin-rich and fast-drying. A separate garden-suitability guide advises against the species. These directional rows produce a consensus avoid result in the evidence table.
One ecological invasive report for the Lower 48 remains outside the fire tally. Revisit the evidence table for the directional rows. Same-form alternatives provide shrub comparisons without changing the evidence attached to common thyme.
Catalonia, Spain; Global; Mediterranean France / Provence; Valencia, Spain / western Mediterranean
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in DE, MA, NY, PA.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
1 ecological invasive report.
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.
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: not suitable inside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its avoid rating)
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.
Thymus vulgaris is rated “DESACONSEJADA” 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.
“recommended for beds and rockeries yet also named among fast-drying flammable species”
The guide lists Thymus vulgaris under recommended bed/rockery species while its warning section names thyme (tomillo) among resin-rich flammable plants.
Source wording: “tomillo”
Listed without a rating (16)Corroboration (16 rows from 1 source)
FLAMITS record 7924; Combustibility measurement; sampling ND.
“flammability value: 3”
FLAMITS record 7974; Ignitability measurement; sampling ND.
Primary study Valette1990: Valette, J.-C. (1990). Flammabilities of Mediterranean forest species. Effects on the combustibility of the forest communities inflammabilités des espèces forestières méditerranéennes. Conséquences sur la combustibilité des formations forestières. Revue forestière française, 42, 76-92.
Shared row context: Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Valette1990-1; sampling june to september.
