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Yellow buckeye is fire resistant: four of five assessments call it low in flammability, while the fifth rates it Moderately Firewise.
NC State University, NC Cooperative Extension, and USFWS called it low in 2005. NC State Extension reached the same finding in 2025 and in its Plant Toolbox. Ohio State University Extension assigns it L, the second band on a five-band scale running from very low to very high. Both of Ohio State’s two lowest bands support a recommendation. Together, these low-flammability findings support yellow buckeye’s fire-resistant rating.
The remaining assessment uses different terms rather than reaching an opposing conclusion. A USDA Forest Service and state Firewise selector gives yellow buckeye a 2 on its four-step scale. That means Moderately Firewise, one step below Firewise and one step above At Risk. It is a more guarded rating than the repeated low-flammability findings, but it does not classify the tree as at risk.
Yellow buckeye is a tree in the Sapindaceae family, reaching about 50 feet at maturity and requiring full sun and high water. It is native in the Southeastern, North-Central, and Northeastern United States and is hardy to USDA zone 5a. The balance of the assessments supports choosing it as a fire-resistant tree, with the Moderately Firewise rating as a reason to avoid treating that judgment as absolute.
Form
tree
Mature height
~50 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
high
Rated in
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Ohio / Midwest +1
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.
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 AL, DC, DE, GA, IL, IN, KY, MD, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, TN, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MD, NC, OH, PA, SC, TN, VA, WV.
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5a; no upper limit is documented.
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.
Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Aesculus flava · 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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 93131, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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 4 — beyond 30 ft; outside the selector's recommendation area [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: aesculus-flava [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (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.
