| Summary: | Prior and Bowman added a new dimension to existing frameworks of post-fire responses of woody plants, by including the trait of colonisation ability (C) for those taxa which neither resprout (R<sub>f</sub>−) nor produce seedlings (S<sub>f</sub>−) after fire. Specifically, they recognised distinctions between: (i) post-fire obligate colonisers, being species that neither resprout nor produce seedlings from persistent seed banks post-fire but are able to colonise burnt areas through dispersal from unburnt populations, and (ii) fire-intolerant, which are unable to recover after fire by either resprouting, seeding or colonisation. We use data on temporal and spatial patterns of colonisation of R<sub>f</sub>−S<sub>f</sub>− mistletoes from a chronosequence study with an exceptionally long span of times since fire as a practical example of the delineation of post-fire obligate coloniser and fire-intolerant species. We propose that when a population of a species is burnt, if the species is unable to regularly colonise and reach reproductive maturity in burnt areas spatially distant from fire edges within plausible and regularly-occurring maximum fire-return intervals for the now-burnt community type, it would be classified as fire-intolerant. In our examples, <i>Lysiana</i> meets the criteria for fire-intolerant in obligate-seeder eucalypt woodland, while <i>Amyema</i> is classed as a post-fire obligate coloniser.
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