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Spreading cotoneaster is rated fire resistant by two Midwestern extension services.
Ohio State University Extension gives the shrub an “L,” or low, rating on its five-point flammability scale. On that scale, both very low and low support a recommendation, while medium is mixed and high or very high means avoid. Ohio State also describes spreading cotoneaster as longer-lived, intolerant of shade and sensitive to insects, but those traits do not change its low-flammability rating.
Michigan State University Extension reaches the same practical conclusion through a different system. Its guidance uses a binary list of plants considered wildfire resistant and recommended for Michigan’s climate, and spreading cotoneaster appears among the shrubs. Unlike Ohio State’s graduated scale, the Michigan list does not separate low from very low flammability.
The agreement is useful because the two services classify the plant independently while using different approaches. Both are expert-curated extension guidance for Midwestern or Great Lakes landscapes, not competing measurements that need to be reconciled. Spreading cotoneaster, a shrub in the rose family, therefore falls on the fire-resistant side of both systems.
Form
shrub
Rated in
Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest
Uses
hedge
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence
Evidence regions
Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 2 scopes across 2 cited fire sources
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in KY, MA, OH, OR.
Native range
Introduced / established
11 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–7.
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.
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.
