Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Trident maple is rated fire resistant, although that conclusion rests on limited primary evidence.
The USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area and participating state Firewise programs assigned trident maple a Firewise rating of 1. That is the most favorable point on their four-level scale, ahead of “Moderately Firewise,” “At Risk,” and “Not Firewise.” Ohio State University Extension also placed it on the favorable side, rating it “L flammability.” On Ohio State’s five-band scale, L is the second-lowest flammability band and one of the bands treated as recommended. The two findings agree rather than presenting homeowners with a regional conflict.
Trident maple is a tree in the Sapindaceae family. Its mature height is about 50 feet. It grows in full sun and is hardy to USDA zone 5a. The Forest Service and state programs describe it as an excellent small shade tree for compact locations. Ohio State describes its size and urban tolerance as moderate.
These ratings support choosing trident maple as a fire-resistant landscape tree, but they do not make it fireproof. The sensible reading is that it received favorable classifications from both the eastern US Firewise selector and Ohio State’s Ohio and Midwest guidance, while the overall support remains limited.
Form
tree
Mature height
~50 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
Ohio / Midwest; eastern US
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
Broader regional context
Federal context
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.
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.
Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Acer buergeranum · 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 3 — 10–30 ft from the structure; thin vegetation, remove debris, and minimize plant massing [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (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.
