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Atlantic white cedar is not fire resistant; every assessment rates it highly flammable or not Firewise.
The five assessments reach the same practical conclusion through different systems. USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs place it in category 4, “Not Firewise,” the least favorable category on their four-point scale. NC State’s extension service rated it high in both 2005 and 2025. Ohio State gave it H, one step below the top of its five-band scale, while Virginia Tech gave it H, the top of its three-band scale. Each system treats those ratings as a reason to avoid the plant.
Atlantic white cedar is a roughly 40-foot tree in the cypress family, native to the Southeastern and Northeastern United States. Its ability to adapt to wet or boggy sites does not earn it a safer rating: the Forest Service assessment notes wetland adaptability, and both Ohio State and Virginia Tech pair wet-site adaptability with H flammability. Ohio State also describes the tree as heat intolerant.
The regional agreement matters. Programs serving the eastern United States, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia use different scales, yet none places Atlantic white cedar in a resistant or even middle category. For landscaping near a structure, the clear choice is to keep this tree at a distance.
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.
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.
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, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, MA, MD, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, CT, DE, FL, GA, MA, MD, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, RI, SC, VA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3a; 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.
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 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 15035, 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 avoid rating)
Firewise Landscaping: keep 30 ft from the home (Zone 3) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (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.
