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Glossy abelia

Abelia grandiflora (accepted: Abelia chinensis) · Caprifoliaceae · all Abelia records

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Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 5 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Australian Capital Territory, Australia; British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Georgetown, Texas; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US; southeastern US
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources

Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) · Official scoped edition
- OH; partial normalized coverage · 2006-03-01
  Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 921 is an Ohio publication that describes Ohio fire seasons and landscape conditions and labels nativity to Ohio. FireApproved publishes 352 exact source-owning plant records from its eight rated tables. This historical publication scope does not assert current extension endorsement or that a listed plant suits every Ohio site.
Firewise Plant Guide · Official scoped edition
- Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14
  The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) · Official scoped edition
- VA; partial normalized coverage · 2009-04-15
  Virginia Cooperative Extension's publication opens with Virginia wildfire conditions, identifies its Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force, and labels plants native to Virginia. FireApproved publishes 306 exact source owners. Publication scope does not establish parcel suitability or current endorsement of this archived 2009 list.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status: Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status: Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here: No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
Broader regional context: Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context: Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.

How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Glossy abelia (Abelia grandiflora) — Photo: (c) Yung-Lun Lin, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: shrub
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable source rows; no primary zone projected
Mature height: ~6 ft
Light: Part sun
Grows in: DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV
Rated in: Australian Capital Territory, Australia; British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Georgetown, Texas +4
Family: Caprifoliaceae
Evidence: 8 cited sources

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record abelia-grandiflora · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Abelia grandiflora · exact match.

Source location: Cold Hardiness Zone field in the recovered selector record.

Not used for comparison: The recovered selector prints one Cold Hardiness Zone value but does not define it as a minimum threshold or a one-zone range.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector: Landscape Zone 2 — 5–10 ft from the structure; maintained lawn or fuel breaks, with easily ignited evergreens avoided [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Firewise Landscaping: do not plant within 5 ft of structures (keep out of Zone 1) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (with its avoid rating)
Guía de pirojardinería: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Plant Guide: Shrubs [Sun City plant-table sections] (mid-scale rating)
Canberra Plant Selector: filtered result page 1 [canberra-selector] (with its recommendation)

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Avoids (2)

Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) — Ohio State University Extension (Sydnor, Steward, Kloss / Ohio DNR Division of Forestry) · 2006 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Marginally cold hardy; adapts to various growing conditions.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) — Virginia Cooperative Extension / Virginia Tech (Appleton, Frenzel, Hillegass, Lyons, Steward — Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force) · 2009 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Adapts to many growing conditions.

Mid-scale / conditional (3)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“MODERATELY Firewise (2)”

Leaves persist throughout winter increasing flammability.
Quantifying and ranking the flammability of ornamental shrubs in the southern United States — USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station + NIST (Long, Behm, Zipperer, Hermansen, Maranghides, Mell) · 2006 · original source Primary evidence Lab-tested lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“Moderate flammability (whole-plant burns, NIST BFRL)”
Firewise Plant Guide — Sun City Texas Firewise Group · updated January 14, 2015 · original source Corroboration HOA exhibit lineage: unknown

“medium”

The table rates Abelia — Abelia grandiflora; Abelia, Glossy — Abelia grandiflora medium for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

Snowberry
Symphoricarpos albus

Pomegranate
Punica granatum

High bush blueberry
Vaccinium corymbosum

American beautyberry
Callicarpa americana

Common witchhazel
Hamamelis virginiana

Winterberry holly
Ilex verticillata

Fire-resistant shrubs listed above

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata ·

Abelia grandiflora (Glossy abelia). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/abelia-grandiflora/. Last verified 2026-08-23.