FireApproved

United States / Grow / alternateleaf dogwood

alternateleaf dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)
Photo: (c) John Abrams, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

alternateleaf dogwood

Cornus alternifolia · Cornaceae · all Cornus records · also called Pagoda dogwood · Wikipedia

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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.

Cornus alternifolia is on-list, as documented by the evidence table. The recommendation stays attached to the cited pagoda dogwood record.

Two hardiness assertions keep independent provenance under hardiness evidence. Their climate role does not replace the source for the list entry. That separation keeps each climate source checkable on its own terms.

The accepted fire pack is limited evidence, with its extent shown in the supporting rows. No unrecorded performance value or condition is supplied.

Range evidence, related plants, and the genus collection remain broader paths without extending these selected facts.

Form
tree
Mature height
~30 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Maine; eastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Maine; eastern US
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Maine fire-resistant plant list · Official scoped edition
    • ME; partial normalized coverage · 2013-10-23

      Maine Forest Service presents a partial list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. FireApproved publishes only 39 unique exact current/accepted matches plus Rhus typhina from the source's explicit parenthetical; unresolved, abbreviated, misspelled, absent, and duplicate-owner rows remain held.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 2a; no upper limit is documented.

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.

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

31

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

31 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • West Virginia (WV)

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 (2)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

  • Maine fire-resistant plant list — Maine Forest Service, Forest Protection Division · MFS-list-updated-2013-10-23 · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: me-mfs-fire-resistant-plants

    “listed as fire-resistant for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure” · original source

    Maine Forest Service includes Pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) on its partial fire-resistant plant list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. The printed scientific name is a unique current-name match to this record.

Same genus in the directory · the Cornus group page

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

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

Cornus alternifolia (Pagoda dogwood). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/cornus-alternifolia/. Last verified 2026-08-23.