Species Brief
Parkinsonia microphylla, yellow paloverde
Written
July, 2026
Contributors
Ilana L. Abrahamson - 1st Compiler, Taryn R. Brahmsteadt - 1st Editor
Abrahamson, Ilana L., compiler. 2026. Species Brief: Parkinsonia microphylla, yellow paloverde. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://research.fs.usda.gov/feis/species-reviews/parmic
DOI
10.2737/feis-species-brief-parmic
Scientific Name
Parkinsonia microphylla
Common Names
yellow paloverde
foothill paloverde
little-leaf paloverde
FEIS Lifeform Type
Shrub
Tree
Kingdom
Plantae
Class
Magnoliopsida (Dicot)
Order
Fabales
Family
Fabaceae
Genus
Parkinsonia
Nativity
Native
Invasiveness
Noninvasive
This Species Brief is a concise summary of the biological, ecological, and fire‑related characteristics of an individual species derived from a Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) Species Review. Table 1 is derived from a standardized template and highlights these characteristics.
| Attribute | Characteristic | Justification | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biological characteristics | |||
| Life form | Tree; Shrub | Yellow paloverde is a multi-stemmed shrub or small tree, usually about 6 m tall but occasionally to 10 m. | FEIS: Botanical Description [1] |
| Typical lifespan | 51-100 years | Most plants live less than 100 years. The maximum lifespan is estimated to be less than 200 years. | FEIS: Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Life cycle | Perennial | Yellow paloverde is a slow-growing, long-lived perennial. | FEIS: Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Drought tolerance | High | Yellow paloverde is described as drought-tolerant but typically requires bimodal precipitation with regular summer moisture; however, severe or prolonged drought can cause widespread episodic mortality. During drought periods, plants drop leaves, twigs, and branches. Prolonged drought may top-kill individuals, although new growth may sprout when moisture returns. | FEIS: Site Characteristics; Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Rooting depth | Deep | Yellow paloverde roots are generally deep and wide spreading. Taproots may terminate at or penetrate caliche layers, and generally follow pockets of soil and narrow fissures in rocky soils. | FEIS: Botanical Description [1] |
| Bark thickness at maturity | Thin | The relatively thin bark (3-4 mm) is mostly smooth and green, and its thinness makes the plant susceptible to damage and death from fire. One authors states that heat of even small fires sears and kills the green bark and underlying cambium, causing tree death. | FEIS: Botanical Description; Immediate Fire Effects [1] |
| Sheds low branches | Sometimes* | During drought the yellow paloverde drops leaves, twigs, and branches, and if droughts are extended large branches may die. However, this is a drought-stress response rather than routine self-pruning of low branches. | FEIS: Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Reproduction and Regeneration | |||
| Adventitious buds | Root crown; Root sprouts | Yellow paloverde can sprout from the root crown after top-kill from fire and/or drought and has been observed sprouting from roots; however, it does not typically reproduce vegetatively and is a weak sprouter. | FEIS: Regeneration Processes [1] |
| Time to reproductive maturity | Insufficient information | The source gives no age at first flowering. It reports slow growth, estimating 20-cm-tall plants at 20 to 40 years old. | FEIS: Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Soil seed bank longevity | Short-term persistent (1-5 years) | Yellow paloverde has a small, at least short-term seed bank, with dormant seeds that likely remain in the soil for a year or more before germinating. | FEIS: Seed Banking [1] |
| Serotinous cones | N/A | This attribute applies to conifers. Yellow paloverde has seed pods that open to release seeds about 6 weeks after flowering. | FEIS: Seed Dispersal; Seasonal Development [1] |
| Seed dispersal mechanism | Gravity; Animal | Seeds fall to the ground after the seed pods open. Seed-caching heteromyid rodents, such as pocket mice, are the primary seed predators and de-facto dispersers. | FEIS: Seed Dispersal [1] |
| Seed dispersal distance | Short (mostly under parent plant); Medium* | Seeds fall beneath the parent plant, but rodents remove most seeds and cache them in small, dispersed clusters often away from parent plants under shrub or grass canopies. No measured dispersal distance is given. | FEIS: Seed Dispersal [1] |
| Optimal conditions for seedling establishment | Nurse plant/object | Seedlings growing in open microsites are often eaten by lagomorphs and rodents. Seedlings often establish under the shelter of rocky areas or shrubs (often in the genus Ambrosia) where they are protected from herbivores. | FEIS: Seedling Establishment and Mortality [1] |
| Successional Status | |||
| Shade tolerance | Insufficient information | The source does not provide explicit information about shade tolerance. However, yellow paloverde grows in communities where it is the primary component of an emergent layer and in communities where it is a component of a moderately dense layer of trees. Yellow paloverde often establishes under protective cover of shrubs, suggesting some degree of shade tolerance as seedlings. | FEIS: Seedling Establishment and Mortality [1] |
| Successional status | Late* | Because disturbances were historically rare and succession slow, the dynamics and underlying mechanisms of succession in desert systems are not well described. In Sonoran desert scrub, yellow paloverde is a long-lived dominant suggesting that it is a late successional species. | FEIS: Successional Status [1] |
| Fire | |||
| Primary fire response(s) or adaptation(s) | Fire Sensitive; Recover/Resprout* | Yellow paloverde is not fire-adapted, is sensitive to fire, and is often killed by fire. However, it sometimes resprouts from stems and root crowns after fire, but observations suggest it is more likely to be killed. | FEIS: Fire Adaptations; Plant Response to Fire [1] |
| Germination is fire stimulated | Rarely/No | Germination is triggered by warm, moist conditions after summer rains. Yellow paloverde seeds have a thick seed coat, which may protect them from heat damage during fire. Seedlings established a few weeks after one severe fire, but this reflects seed survival, not fire-cued dormancy break. | FEIS: Germination; Immediate Fire Effects [1] |
| Flowering/fruiting is fire stimulated | Rarely/No | Flowering is influenced by rainfall, day length, and temperature. In very dry years it might not flower at all, while it flowers abundantly after a wetter-than-usual rainy season, with no fire role described. | FEIS: Seasonal Development [1] |
| Season when it is most sensitive to fire | Insufficient information | Yellow paloverde is fire sensitive. It sometimes resprouts from stems and root crowns but is more often killed. Most fire in the Sonoran desert occurs in the spring and summer, but specific details about seasonal differences in fire sensitivity were not available. | FEIS: Plant Response to Fire [1] |
| Plant flammability | Low* | Although susceptible to charring and scorching, yellow paloverde plants are rarely entirely consumed by fire, and biomass may be left largely intact. Living stems may be more hydrated than other plants during drought, so litter and fuels beneath the canopy are more likely to burn than the canopy itself; however, dead branches and twigs can carry fire. | FEIS: Fuel Characteristics [1] |
| Early colonizer/recolonizer of burned or disturbed sites | Rarely/No | Yellow paloverde populations are slow to recover after fire. It is a weak sprouter, and postfire seedling establishment is also likely to be low; however, information on postfire seedling establishment is limited and largely anecdotal. Postfire establishment of yellow paloverde seedlings was observed on two burned sites, while surveys on four other burned sites found few or no yellow paloverde seedlings. Where seedlings did establish, they likely did not survive their first year, as they lacked protection (i.e., nurse plants) from herbivores. | FEIS: Plant Response to Fire; Postfire Seedling Establishment [1] |
| Effect of fire exclusion on population | N/A* | Yellow paloverde is easily damaged and often killed by fire and postfire recovery is slow. Excluding fire likely benefits yellow paloverde populations by minimizing fire-related mortality and maintaining historical fire regimes. However, given that desert scrub communities historically had long fire intervals, it is unlikely that fire exclusion would affect yellow paloverde populations. | FEIS: Fire Management Considerations; Fire Regimes [1] |
| Is this species typically managed with prescribed fire? | Rarely/No* | Prescribed fire is not used to manage native Sonoran desert scrub communities. However, nonnative pastures are often burned to kill yellow paloverde and other woody plants. | FEIS: Fire Management Considerations [1] |
| Predominant historical fire frequencies of ecosystem where it most commonly occurs | Infrequent | In Sonoran desert scrub, fire is thought to have been rare to infrequent, with mean historical fire intervals derived from LANDFIRE succession modeling estimated to exceed 1,000 years. | FEIS: Fire Regimes [1] |
| Predominant historical fire severity where it most commonly occurs | Replacement* | Historically small or patchy fires were infrequent and replacement fires rare to absent. While fire was largely absent, when it occurs it often kills the fire-sensitive dominants, including yellow paloverde, so severity is inferred as replacement. | FEIS: Successional Status; Postfire Recovery [1] |
| Predominant historical fire regime group where it most commonly occurs | 5 | Mean historical fire intervals in Sonoran desert scrub, where yellow paloverde is most common, are estimated to exceed 1,000 years, with the fire-sensitive dominants killed when fire occurs — consistent with fire regime group 5. | FEIS: Fire Regimes [1] |
| Alters historical fuel characteristics of ecosystems where it occurs | Rarely/No | Altered fuels in yellow paloverde communities are attributed to the introduction and spread of nonnative invasive grasses, not to yellow paloverde itself. | FEIS: Fuel Characteristics; Fire Regimes [1] |
| Biophysical Setting | Mean Fire Interval (years) | Fire Severity Percent (%) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code | Fire Regime Group | Low | Mixed | Replacement | All | Low | Mixed | Replacement |
| Series 10900 - Sonoran Granite Outcrop Desert Scrub | ||||||||
| 10900_14 | V-B | 513 | 513 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Series 10910 - Sonoran Mid-Elevation Desert Scrub | ||||||||
| 10910_13_14 | IV-B | 104 | 104 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| 10910_15 | V-A | 355 | 355 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Series 11090 - Sonoran Paloverde-Mixed Cacti Desert Scrub | ||||||||
| 11090_4_13 | V-B | 1284 | 1284 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| 11090_14 | V-B | 1056 | 1056 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| 11090_15_25 | V-B | 1049 | 1049 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Series 10820 - Mojave Mid-Elevation Mixed Desert Scrub | ||||||||
| 10820_12_15_16_17_23_24 | V-B | 815 | 815 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Summary | ||||||||
| Minimum | 104 | 104 | 0 | 0 | 100 | |||
| Maximum | 1284 | 1284 | 0 | 0 | 100 | |||
| Mean | 739 | 739 | 0 | 0 | 100 | |||
| Median | 815 | 815 | 0 | 0 | 100 | |||
| Percentage of fires in 3 fire severity classes, derived from LANDFIRE succession modeling. Replacement-severity fires cause >75% kill or top-kill of the upper canopy layer; mixed-severity fires cause 26%-75%; low-severity fires cause <26%. | ||||||||
| LANDFIRE. 2020. Biophysical settings models and descriptions, [Online]. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service; U.S. Department of the Interior; U.S. Geological Survey; Arlington, VA: The Nature Conservancy, (Producers). Available: https://www.landfirereview.org/search.php [96496] | ||||||||
1. Helmy, Olga E. 2022. Parkinsonia microphylla, yellow paloverde. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://research.fs.usda.gov/feis/species-reviews/parmic
Last updated August 24, 2026