Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, painted buckeye is rated fire resistant, with all four cited assessments placing it on the recommended side.
NC State’s extension service, including an earlier assessment prepared with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, repeatedly rates the species low in flammability. On its scales, low is the recommended class rather than the medium, high, or extreme classes.
Oregon State’s extension service reaches the same practical conclusion from a different region. It includes painted buckeye among fire-resistant plants suited to Willamette Valley growing conditions and gives the species a USDA hardiness range of zones 5 through 8. That regional qualification matters for growing success, but it does not create a disagreement over the fire rating.
Painted buckeye is a high-water tree in the soapberry family that reaches about 65 feet at maturity. It is native to the southeastern United States and is otherwise listed as hardy to USDA zone 7b. Taken together, the North Carolina low-flammability ratings and Oregon’s fire-resistant recommendation make the case unusually consistent. Fire resistant does not mean incapable of burning, but among plants assessed by these extension services, painted buckeye belongs on the lower-flammability side.
Form
tree
Mature height
~65 ft
Water need
high
Rated in
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Oregon (Willamette Valley)
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.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AL, GA, NC, SC, TN, VA.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, GA, NC, SC, TN, VA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
2 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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 93161, 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.
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Painted Buckeye profile (PDF page 144) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: aesculus-sylvatica [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.
