Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Cedrus deodara is included in a WUI ignition-index study on using vegetation flammability to improve planning. The selected test material was green, a condition kept explicit under performance conditions.
The recommendation for this record is avoid, as shown in the evidence table. One ecological invasive report sits beside that recommendation as an independent ecological signal.
Two climate assertions can be examined under hardiness evidence. Same-form alternatives have their own cited path under related plants, preserving comparison value without extending the deodar cedar findings to those other plants or their evidence packs.
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, GA, MD, NC, NJ, OH, PA, SC, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; 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 prints 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Cedrus deodara · 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.
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)
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.
Cedrus deodara 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.
3 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Molina2017: Molina, J. R., Martín, T., Rodríguez Y Silva, F., & Herrera, M. Á. (2017). The ignition index based on flammability of vegetation improves planning in the wildland-urban interface: A case study in Southern Spain. Landscape and Urban Planning, 158, 129-138.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Molina2017-1; sampling summer.
