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Atlas cedar

Cedrus atlantica · Pinaceae · all Cedrus records

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: Mixed evidence — 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: 3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; Catalonia, Spain; Global; Mediterranean France / Provence; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source

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 DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

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.

Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) — Photo: (c) Mourad Harzallah, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: tree
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable source rows; no primary zone projected
Mature height: ~50 ft
Light: Full sun
Grows in: DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV
Rated in: Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; Catalonia, Spain; Global; Mediterranean France / Provence +2
Family: Pinaceae
Evidence: 10 cited sources

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 cedrus-atlantica · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Cedrus atlantica · 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 3 — 10–30 ft from the structure; thin vegetation, remove debris, and minimize plant massing [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (with its avoid rating)
Guía de pirojardinería: not suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its avoid rating)
Time to extinguish the exotic flame: Lessons from the 202…: Urban zone; Table 1 and deposited raw workbook [macalister-2025-leaf-flammability] (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.

Avoids (3)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“NOT Firewise (4)”

Irregular upright growing evergreen tree with showy blue foliage.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) — Virginia Cooperative Extension / Virginia Tech (Appleton, Frenzel, Hillegass, Lyons, Steward — Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force) · 2009 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Difficult to transplant, drought tolerant.
Guía de pirojardinería — guía práctica de jardinería adaptada a la prevención de incendios forestales — Diputació de Girona and Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya · 2020 Spanish edition · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: elvira-hernando-1989 + cooperem-tree

“MUY DESACONSEJADA”

Cedrus atlantica is rated “MUY DESACONSEJADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Time to extinguish the exotic flame: Lessons from the 2021 Cape Town fire — South African Journal of Botany / University of Cape Town · South African Journal of Botany 184:1163-1173 · original source Primary evidence Lab-tested lineage: independent (UCT post-Table-Mountain-fire study)

“Partially burned”

Official-workbook means across 50 leaf trials: fresh ignition 5.252 s, fresh sustainability 14.836 s, dry ignition 0.865 s, dry sustainability 6.935 s, and combustibility 1.463 mg DW s-1. Published Table 1 observation for the 2021 fire: Partially burned.

Listed without a rating (5)

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

5 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
- “time to flaming (s): 3” · score 3 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 4699; Ignitability measurement; plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Hachmi2011-1; sampling ND. Primary study Hachmi2011: Hachmi, M. H., Sesbou, A., Benjelloun, H., El Handouz, N., & Bouanane, F. (2011). A Simple Technique to Estimate the Flammability Index of Moroccan Forest Fuels. Journal of Combustion, 2011, 1-11.
- “flame height (cm): 13” · score 13 (FLAMITS — flame height (cm))
  
  FLAMITS record 4733; Combustibility measurement; plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Hachmi2011-1; sampling ND. Primary study Hachmi2011: Hachmi, M. H., Sesbou, A., Benjelloun, H., El Handouz, N., & Bouanane, F. (2011). A Simple Technique to Estimate the Flammability Index of Moroccan Forest Fuels. Journal of Combustion, 2011, 1-11.
- “burning duration (s): 20.4” · score 20.4 (FLAMITS — burning duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 4734; Sustainability measurement; plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Hachmi2011-1; sampling ND. Primary study Hachmi2011: Hachmi, M. H., Sesbou, A., Benjelloun, H., El Handouz, N., & Bouanane, F. (2011). A Simple Technique to Estimate the Flammability Index of Moroccan Forest Fuels. Journal of Combustion, 2011, 1-11.
- “flammability value: 1.35” · score 1.35 (FLAMITS — flammability value)
  
  FLAMITS record 4808; Ignitability measurement; plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Hachmi2011-1; sampling ND. Primary study Hachmi2011: Hachmi, M. H., Sesbou, A., Benjelloun, H., El Handouz, N., & Bouanane, F. (2011). A Simple Technique to Estimate the Flammability Index of Moroccan Forest Fuels. Journal of Combustion, 2011, 1-11.
- “flammability value: 1” · score 1 (FLAMITS — flammability value)
  
  FLAMITS record 13340; Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Valette1990-1; sampling june to september. Primary study Valette1990: Valette, J.-C. (1990). Flammabilities of Mediterranean forest species. Effects on the combustibility of the forest communities inflammabilités des espèces forestières méditerranéennes. Conséquences sur la combustibilité des formations forestières. Revue forestière française, 42, 76-92.

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Fire-resistant trees listed above

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

Profiles: GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata ·

Cedrus atlantica (Atlas cedar). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/cedrus-atlantica/. Last verified 2026-08-23.