Watch out for flaming flower pots

Talk about scorched earth!

This summer, Wisconsin resident Ron Severson returned home from a weekend trip to discover his newly purchased begonia looking rather strange.  The plant was still alive, but the plastic flower pot that held the plant had melted, along with the plastic table underneath the pot. In fact, plastic had melted all the way down to the porch floor.

Thankful there wasn't more damage but concerned that the cause may have been spontaneous combustion, Severson sent the melted glob to the state's Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

"It was a mystery," said Jim Rabbitt, the department's director of consumer protection. But not for long.  First, department investigators sifting through the ashes found what looked like a cigarette butt. The investigators decided to purchase bags of peat and potting soil and test the flammability of both by putting the products in separate pots and dropping a lighted cigarette on each pot. The result: "They caught on fire and smoldered for about an hour," said department spokesman Glen Loyd.  "There were never any flames but it was really smoking."

As a result, the department issued a consumer alert about the fire hazards of potted plants. One reason for the risk, the alert explained, is that there is little, if any soil, in commercial potted plants these days. "What you find is a mixture of peat and vermiculite. When peat is dry it burns easily," the alert said.

In a report from the city of Red Deer in Alberta, Canada, a potted plant fire lead to over $130,000 in damages. The fire apparently started when a cigarette was tossed in a peat-moss planter on the front porch. Red Deer has also issued a warning on its Web site, noting that many potting soil mixes on the market today contain flammable material such as shredded wood, bark and/or peat moss -- and little real dirt.  What can even make matters worse, the city notes, is that some potting soil mixtures may contain fertilizers which can accelerate fires.     

Fire prevention advocates and gardening experts, however, say the chances of such fires are extremely low. The National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit group that keeps detailed data on fires, said it has no reports of fires caused by flaming flower pots.

Robert LaGasse, executive director of the Mulch and Soil Council, said he has only heard of a couple such incidents in the two decades he's been in the business. If you let a flower pot "dry out enough and put something hot enough in it, it could ignite," LaGasse said. But, he added, generally, "a bunch of dead plants in the pot is not the objective of most gardeners."

Still, he said, the risk of fire is probably one more good reason not to smoke.  Besides, he added, "it's rude and ugly" to throw a cigarette butt in mulch or a flower pot. At his house, he noted, such behavior could even be quite downright dangerous, considering the special care his wife has tendered on her plants. "If you put a cigarette butt in my wife's plants, fire will be the least of your problems."

—Marc Perton