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Bog rosemary has a favorable Firewise listing tied to the wet, acidic, cool conditions that the source describes.
The historical Eastern US Fire Performance Plant Selector rates Andromeda polifolia Firewise. Its soil requirements make that useful for a specific garden setting: very acidic wetland soil, partial sun and cool temperatures. High tolerance of poorly drained soil appears alongside low drought resistance. The favorable fire grade is therefore a poor reason to choose it for a dry planting bed.
The row assigns Landscape Zone 2, or LZ2, 5 to 10 feet from a house. For sites with high fire risk, that framework calls for a maintained lawn and fuel breaks such as stone paths or rock gardens, while excluding evergreens that ignite easily and burn quickly. For trees within this zone, the selector specifies at least 10 feet of vertical and horizontal clearance from the mature tree to the house, plus 10 to 15 feet between crown edges. Those are tree clearances, not a spacing prescription for each bog rosemary plant.
The row marks ladder potential without pruning as No, but the program still requires watering, pruning and cleanup. Remove dead foliage and twigs, prune dead, diseased or low branches, and maintain separation between vegetation horizontally and vertically. A suitable wet site and continuing care belong with the favorable listing; the historical zone is not a current legal setback.
Form
perennial
Mature height
~2 ft
Light
Part sun
Rated in
eastern US
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Documented in AK, CT, DC, DE, ID, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, VT, WA, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AK, CT, ID, IL, IN, MA, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT, WA, WI, WV.
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.
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: Andromeda polifolia · 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 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)
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.
