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Incense cedar

Calocedrus decurrens · Cupressaceae

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Highly flammable — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context
No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence
4 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Ashland, Oregon; Catalonia, Spain; Global; Lake Tahoe Basin, Nevada and California; Michigan / Great Lakes; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Maintenance
No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.
Typed publication scope: 4 scopes across 4 cited fire sources
  • Prohibited Flammable Plants (Ashland Municipal Code 9.04) · Official scoped edition
    • City of Ashland (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26

      This is a City of Ashland adoption fact, not statewide Oregon guidance or an experimental flammability result. FireApproved publishes 24 taxonomy-safe owners as city-level regulatory context. It applies to new planting and propagation within 30 feet of structures, including structures on adjacent lots; it is not projected as a blanket removal order for every established listed plant.

  • Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database · Official scoped edition
    • Southern Idaho (ID footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2013-11-08

      The official database labels itself "For Southern Idaho" and describes Idaho residents at the urban-rangeland interface. FireApproved publishes 419 existing plant owners that cite its scored rows. This bounded Southern Idaho scope is regional context, not statewide coverage or a conclusion that the score transfers unchanged to every Idaho site.

  • Wildfire-resistant Landscape Plants for Michigan (Extension Bulletin E2948) · Official scoped edition
    • MI; partial normalized coverage · 2007-01-01

      Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.

  • Home Landscaping Guide for Lake Tahoe and Vicinity (Ed. Bulletin 06-01) · Official scoped edition
    • Lake Tahoe Basin (CA, NV footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2006-01-01

      Nevada Division of Forestry and University of Nevada Cooperative Extension publish Bulletin 06-01 for the Lake Tahoe Basin and vicinity. FireApproved publishes 83 exact rated owners as basin context across Nevada and California. Rough estimates are not statewide or site ratings.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in CA, MI, NV, OR.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA, OR.
Introduced / established
No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness
2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status
Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here
No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
Broader regional context
Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context
Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.
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.

Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens)
Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.
Form
tree
USDA hardiness
Applicable source statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each source
Mature height
~100 ft
Water need
low
Current cited native range
CA, OR
Grows in
CA, MI, NV, OR
Rated in
Ashland, Oregon; Catalonia, Spain; Global; Lake Tahoe Basin, Nevada and California +2
Family
Cupressaceae
Evidence
35 cited sources

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

2

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

2 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • California (CA)
  • Oregon (OR)

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.

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.

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.

Recommends (1)

Avoids (4)

Listed without a rating (30)

Fire-resistant trees instead

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Acer negundo Thornless honeylocust
Gleditsia triacanthos Smooth sumac
Rhus glabra Douglas Hawthorne
Crataegus douglasii

Fire-resistant trees listed above

Same genus in the directory

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

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

Calocedrus decurrens (Incense cedar). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/calocedrus-decurrens/. Last verified 2026-08-23.