Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Cranberry cotoneaster is broadly rated fire resistant, though FireSmart BC says more research is needed.
All six assessments support using it in a fire-resistant landscape. Extension services in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Michigan, and Ohio recommend it for their regions. Ohio State places it in the “L” band, the second-lowest category on its five-point flammability scale and one of the two bands it recommends. Oregon State includes the shrub among plants suited to Willamette Valley growing conditions and in its later fire-resistant plant gallery.
FireSmart BC also calls cranberry cotoneaster an approved fire-resistant plant, but flags it for further study. That caution limits the certainty behind the label without reversing the recommendation. The agreement across several regional extension services is the stronger practical signal: cranberry cotoneaster is a reasonable fire-resistant choice where it suits the site.
Cranberry cotoneaster is a moderately watered shrub in the rose family, reaching about five feet at maturity. It is hardy in USDA zones 4a through 7b and has been introduced in Oregon. Those traits help determine whether it fits a particular garden, while the published assessments consistently place it on the fire-resistant side.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~5 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
British Columbia; Michigan / Great Lakes; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest +3
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
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.
Willamette Valley (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-02-01
OSU Extension says EM 9103 highlights fire-resistant plants that thrive under Willamette Valley growing conditions. FireApproved publishes 172 exact owners only as valley context. The guide shares the PNW 590 lineage and is not a second independent vote or statewide site clearance.
The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, KY, OH, OR, PA, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
2 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
4 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.
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: PlantCharacteristics record 88881, 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 2 — 5–10 ft from the structure; maintained lawn or fuel breaks, with easily ignited evergreens avoided [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Cranberry Cotoneaster profile (PDF page 122) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
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.
