Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Vine maple is rated fire resistant, with consistent Pacific Northwest recommendations and Oregon guidance on keeping the planting healthy.
Acer circinatum appears in shrub tables even though it is also described as a tree. King County's Puget Sound Basin list puts vine maple among shrubs, as does Oregon State's deciduous-shrub table. This difference in landscape grouping does not create a disagreement about the plant's fire resistance: both publications favor it.
The joint Oregon, Washington and Idaho extension guide supplies another favorable recommendation. Oregon State also profiles vine maple for Willamette Valley growing conditions and includes it in its educational shrub gallery. The shared scientific name helps connect the recommendations across those different formats.
For a homeowner, Oregon's summer-care advice gives the selection a practical condition. Its guide says most recommended plants need some dry-season irrigation and should remain healthy. Vine maple is therefore a supported choice within this regional landscape guidance, with maintenance accompanying the favorable label rather than disappearing behind it.
Form
tree
Mature height
~20 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
British Columbia; OR/WA/ID; Oregon; Oregon (Willamette Valley) +2
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
King County's current wildfire page links this list for the Puget Sound Basin. FireApproved publishes 82 exact source owners as basin context, not statewide Washington guidance or a site-specific recommendation.
Willamette Valley (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-02-01
OSU Extension says EM 9103 highlights fire-resistant plants that thrive under Willamette Valley growing conditions. FireApproved publishes 172 exact owners only as valley context. The guide shares the PNW 590 lineage and is not a second independent vote or statewide site clearance.
The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AK, CA, ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA, OR, WA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
3 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.
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.
Native and introduced range evidence
These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and
introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval.
Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.
The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.
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.
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.
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ extended zone (30-100 m) [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes: Oregon [osu-frn6-oregon-regions] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Vine Maple profile (PDF page 163) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant plant profile galleries: Vine maple — Acer circinatum [osu-2023-shrubs-gallery] (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.
“Fire-Resistant Plant Materials for Oregon”
· condition: green
Acer circinatum (Vine maple) is listed under “Shrubs—deciduous”. The guide says most listed plants require some irrigation during Oregon's dry summer months and must be maintained in a healthy condition.
