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Canadian serviceberry has favorable landscape ratings, with explicit tree-clearance conditions in the eastern Fire Performance Plant Selector.
Laboratory measurements describe a different aspect of its burning behavior.
NC State’s North Carolina guide includes Amelanchier canadensis, or juneberry, among low-flammability plants. Maryland’s Firewise list calls it relatively resistant to fire and describes it as drought tolerant but intolerant of air pollution.
The eastern selector gives Canadian serviceberry its Firewise category and assigns LZ2, the zone 5 to 10 feet from a structure. Its tree instructions also require at least 10 feet of both horizontal and vertical clearance from the house at mature height, plus 10 to 15 feet between crown edges. The zone label therefore cannot be read as permission to put a mature tree only 5 feet from the house.
That program calls for a well-kept lawn, avoidance of easily ignited evergreens, and fuel breaks such as stone walkways, patios or rock gardens. It flags ladder potential without pruning for this species. Continued watering, dead-material removal and pruning accompany its Firewise designation; the distances belong to this source’s landscape scheme.
Dibble and colleagues tested dried, conditioned foliage and twigs at 25 kW/m² in a cone calorimeter. Canadian serviceberry was measured but was not among the authors’ named high or low effective-heat-of-combustion groups. Rankings by ignition time, peak heat-release rate and effective heat of combustion did not agree. Those conditioned-sample results do not assign a living tree a universal fire-resistance class. For a planting decision, retain the regional recommendations and their spacing and care requirements alongside the laboratory findings.
Form
tree
Mature height
~20 ft
Light
Part sun
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Global; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; NC; North Carolina +3
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Global; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; eastern US; north-eastern and mid-Atlantic United States
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 5 scopes across 3 cited fire sources
Northeastern and mid-Atlantic study sites (ME, MD, MA, NY, VA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2007-08-20
The authors collected foliage and twigs across study sites in Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, then conditioned and tested the samples in a cone calorimeter. FireApproved publishes 37 exact source owners only as multi-state laboratory context. The source does not establish that every taxon was sampled in every named state, whole-plant behavior, landscape suitability, or state planting guidance.
Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
NJ; partial normalized coverage
New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AL, CT, DC, DE, GA, MA, MD, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, CT, DC, DE, GA, MA, MD, ME, NC, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT.
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3b; 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 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.
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] (with its recommendation)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: amelanchier-canadensis [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Deciduous Trees [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (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.
Listed as Amelanchier canadensis (Shadbush / Serviceberry). The source says listed species exhibit stronger resistance to ignition by wildfires. Source comments: Tolerant of drought but not air pollution
FLAMITS record 2861; Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Dibble2007-1; sampling ND. Primary study Dibble2007: Dibble, A. C., White, R. H., & Lebow, P. K. (2007). Combustion characteristics of north-eastern USA vegetation tested in the cone calorimeter: invasive versus non-invasive plants. International journal of wildland fire, 16, 426-443.
