United States / Grow / black baneberry

black baneberry (Cimicifuga racemosa)
Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

black baneberry

Cimicifuga racemosa (accepted: Actaea racemosa) · Ranunculaceae · also called Black cohosh · Wikipedia

View Saved

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.

Form
perennial
Rated in
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • 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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, TN, VA, WV.
Native range
The legacy compatibility field lists NC in native range; its field-level source was not retained.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 3a–8b.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

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.

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.

Mid-scale / conditional (3)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

Fire-resistant perennials instead

Last verified 2026-08-26. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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

Cimicifuga racemosa (Black cohosh). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/cimicifuga-racemosa/. Last verified 2026-08-26.