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Wintergreen barberry cannot be called clearly fire resistant: one major guide recommends it, while another rates it highly flammable.
The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs place the shrub at Firewise 1, the best category on their four-point scale. Their description also identifies it as the most cold-tolerant evergreen barberry. Virginia Cooperative Extension takes the opposite position, assigning wintergreen barberry an H on its three-point flammability scale, where H means avoid. It also cautions against contact with the plant’s spiny stems and leaves.
The conflict may come from how the guides classify plants. The eastern Firewise selector makes a species-level recommendation, while Virginia rates every evergreen tree and shrub in its tables H. That broad pattern does not invalidate Virginia’s warning, but it helps explain how the same shrub can land at opposite ends of two scales.
Wintergreen barberry is a roughly six-foot shrub suited to part sun and moderate water, and it is hardy to USDA zone 5a. Because the published guidance remains split, its fire resistance should not be treated as settled. Anyone selecting vegetation for the area near a home should follow the local fire authority’s plant guidance rather than assume the favorable rating applies everywhere.
Questions
Why does this record show a conflict?
The computed recommendation is conflict. One ecological invasive report and two hardiness assertions sit beside that split; they are not a second fire recommendation. Same-form alternatives are cited on the related list.
Virginia Cooperative Extension's publication opens with Virginia wildfire conditions, identifies its Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force, and labels plants native to Virginia. FireApproved publishes 306 exact source owners. Publication scope does not establish parcel suitability or current endorsement of this archived 2009 list.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AL, DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
4 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 6b; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
1 ecological invasive report.
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: Berberis julianae · 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 72303, 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 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.
