river birch

Betula nigra · Betulaceae · all Betula records · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

River birch receives low-flammability landscape ratings, while a separate forestry selector warns about peeling papery bark and trees with multiple trunks.

Ohio State's Firewise landscape guide places Betula nigra in its low category. Its growing notes report tolerance of wet soils and caution about high pH and sensitivity to cold. Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Tech give the same low category and also describe tolerance of wet soils. These are favorable landscape judgments accompanied by site notes.

The Eastern United States plant selector, produced by the USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs, adds a more specific caution: peeling papery bark and multi-trunk trees add fire potential. That warning concerns those bark and growth conditions; it does not say that every river birch has multiple trunks or that all bark presents the same problem.

Read the favorable grades alongside that structural warning when considering a river birch. Soil suitability and the actual tree's condition both matter to the decision. The Virginia guide also ties fire resistance to maintenance, so the species name alone does not settle how a planting will perform.

Form: tree
Mature height: ~50 ft
Light: Part sun
Water need: high
Rated in: Global; Louisiana; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; NC +6

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Global; Louisiana; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Ohio / Midwest; Tennessee; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 8 scopes across 6 cited fire sources

Firewise Landscaping (Hammond Research Station) · Official scoped edition
- LA; partial normalized coverage · 2008-12-02
  LSU AgCenter calls these 31 ornamentals commonly used in Louisiana and recommended for Louisiana firewise landscaping efforts. FireApproved publishes 31 exact source owners, mostly at the source's genus grain. Undocumented curation remains corroborative and is not site suitability.
Firewise Landscaping Plants (Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia editions) · Official scoped edition
- MD; partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-08
  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.
Fire-Resistant Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) · Official scoped edition
- NC; complete normalized coverage · 2025-03-26
  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.
Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) · Official scoped edition
- OH; partial normalized coverage · 2006-03-01
  Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 921 is an Ohio publication that describes Ohio fire seasons and landscape conditions and labels nativity to Ohio. FireApproved publishes 352 exact source-owning plant records from its eight rated tables. This historical publication scope does not assert current extension endorsement or that a listed plant suits every Ohio site.
Landscaping Guidelines to Protect Your Home from Wildfire (SP685) · Official scoped edition
- TN; partial normalized coverage · 2006-10-24
  University of Tennessee Extension SP685 is Tennessee landscape guidance and publishes 78 represented plant owners. Most table rows are a carrier of Virginia Firescapes rather than an independent rating; Tennessee source scope does not change that lineage or establish site suitability.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) · Official scoped edition
- VA; partial normalized coverage · 2009-04-15
  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, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MN, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, WV.
Introduced / established
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.

Current native

30

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

30 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alabama (AL)
Arkansas (AR)
Connecticut (CT)
District of Columbia (DC)
Delaware (DE)
Florida (FL)
Georgia (GA)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Louisiana (LA)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Mississippi (MS)
North Carolina (NC)
New Jersey (NJ)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Pennsylvania (PA)
South Carolina (SC)
Tennessee (TN)
Texas (TX)
Virginia (VA)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record betula-nigra · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Betula nigra · 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.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record BENI · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -31°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Betula nigra · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 69997, 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 3 — 10–30 ft from the structure; thin vegetation, remove debris, and minimize plant massing [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (with its recommendation)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: betula-nigra [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 without a rating (2)

Corroboration (2 rows from 1 source)

FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database — Dryad / Global Ecology and Biogeography · Dryad version 9 · original source Corroboration Trait database lineage: meta-aggregator

2 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
- Primary study Shan2008: Shan, Y., Liu, N., & Shu, L. (2008). Flammability ranking of foliage species by factor analysis of physical and chemical pyric properties. Fire and Materials: An International Journal, 32, 371-382.
  
  Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; site Shan2008-1; sampling ND.
  - “temperature at flaming (°C): 270”
    
    FLAMITS record 12554; Ignitability measurement; device ignition temperature tester.
  - “calorific value (kcal/kg): 4889.57”
    
    FLAMITS record 12555; Combustibility measurement; device calorimeter.

Guides that discuss this plant

Does anything here not grow fast and wet

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Betula nigra (River birch). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/betula-nigra/. Last verified 2026-08-23.