Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Norfolk Island pine has a moderate flammability rating, so it is not a clear choice for fire-resistant planting.
Tasmania Fire Service’s 2017 guidance places it in the middle of three flammability groups. That classification carries practical advice: avoid it within the Building Protection Zone. The service reserves acceptance in that zone for plants in its low-flammability group.
A separate measurement in the FLAMITS database gives a maximum flame temperature of 392.856°C for Norfolk Island pine leaves tested on a burning bench. This measures how hot the flame became under those test conditions. It cannot, by itself, tell a gardener how readily a living tree will ignite. FLAMITS brings together different burning measurements and retains their experimental context, without applying a single threshold that converts every number into a planting recommendation.
For someone choosing a tree near a home, the moderate rating therefore carries more direct guidance about placement than the flame temperature does. The bench result does not overturn that advice or establish a low-flammability rating. If the proposed planting is within Tasmania’s Building Protection Zone, the fire service’s guidance points to choosing another plant.
Form
tree
Mature height
~50 ft
Rated in
Global; Tasmania, Australia
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 10b; 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.
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 15005, 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 Resisting Garden Plants for the Urban Fringe and Rur…: should be avoided in the Building Protection Zone [Texas Building Protection Zone] (mid-scale rating)
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.
2 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Zhang2022: Zhang, S., Cornwell, W. K., Zhao, W., van Logtestijn, R. S., Krab, E. J., Aerts, R., & Cornelissen, J. H. (2022). Experimental evidence that leaf litter decomposability and flammability are decoupled across gymnosperm species. Journal of Ecology, 111, 761-772.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Zhang2022-1; sampling january and march 2011.
