Commerce City, CO Invasive Plant Rules: Prohibited Species (2026)

Sec. 21-7513(3) tells developers to pick plant materials from the city's approved plant list and landscaping specifications, then states flatly that prohibited species referenced in these specifications are not allowed in the city. The list itself lives in a separate document the city maintains rather than being spelled out plant-by-plant inside the Land Development Code text. Separately, Sec. 21-7514 treats certain tree species as a nuisance rather than a protected resource: cotton-bearing cottonwood, Siberian or Chinese elm, Russian olive, and female box-elder are named as species that constitute a nuisance to the public.

That label matters because Sec. 21-7514(4) otherwise requires significant trees, any existing tree over eight inches in caliper, to be preserved wherever feasible and replaced on a caliper-for-caliper basis if removed during development; a tree on the nuisance list is exempt from that preservation and replacement duty, so a developer can clear a Russian olive or Siberian elm without triggering the significant-tree mitigation process. The code carves out one exception to the nuisance label itself: native cotton-bearing cottonwood and female box-elder trees are not treated as nuisance species when they sit inside a natural area buffer zone, where their habitat value outweighs the nuisance concern the list otherwise addresses citywide.