Knowledge about fuel vegetation is a fundamental part of the fire management that is necessary to both conserve biodiversity and reduce the negative impacts of wildland fires. On the framework of the European programme FireParadox, flammability characteristics of dead fuels were described in Southern France on both acidic and calcareous soils according to fire modalities (no fire since 1960, 1 and more fires old and recent), to assess if they were influenced by the past fire regime, influencing in turn the vegetation dynamics. Samples of disturbed litters have been collected in representative ecosystems of southern France : (i) on calcareous soils, in high stands of Pinus halepensis and of mixed oak-pine, in medium-sized stands of P. halepensis and mixed oak-pine with understorey and in garrigue (shrubland); and (ii) on acidic soils, in high Quercus suber stands, high maquis and lower maquis. The low and medium-sized stands come from a post-fire succession, the highest biodiversity, in terms of specific richness occurring between 4 and 11 years after the fire. To assess the flammability of these litters, several series of tests were conducted in laboratory, using a glowing firebrand and a wind speed of 10 km.h-1. The main parameters recorded were time to ignition, flaming duration, flame propagation. For the low (garrigue and low maquis) and the medium-sized (pure pine or mixed pine-oak stands with understorey and higher maquis) stands where biodiversity is maximum, the comparison between litters collected on calcareous soils and on acidic soils shows no significant difference for all the parameters. For the high mature stands, where biodiversity is the lowest, especially in Pine stands, the comparison between the both sets of litters shows that there is a significant difference only for the time to ignition which is much higher on acidic soils (73s) than on calcareous soils (17s). These results suggest that the Quercus suber litter collected on acidic soils is less flammable than the litter collected on calcareous soils.