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The historical Eastern U.S.
Fire Performance Plant Selector calls may hawthorn Firewise, with outer-zone placement and pruning conditions.
Crataegus aestivalis receives a Firewise grade in the original selector listing, which also marks ladder potential without pruning as Yes. Its LZ3 assignment matters to that pairing: this is the source's band 10 to 30 feet from the house, within a framework for sites at high fire risk. A favorable grade does not place the tree beside the building.
Within LZ3, the instructions call for removing debris and thinning vegetation out to 30 feet; on sloping ground, the downhill clearing and thinning extend to 100 feet. Driveways can interrupt fuel. The zone allows low and moderately flammable plants. Choose shrubs and groundcovers by their eventual height, minimize massed planting, and mow brush and weeds annually. For trees, the source specifies a minimum of 10 to 15 feet between crowns. Terracing a steep slope may slow fire spread, depending on wind and available fuel.
May hawthorn's own row describes many thorns, odoriferous flowers and bird attraction. These are practical planting considerations, not reasons given for its fire grade. The recorded preferences are full sun, adaptable soil pH, low tolerance of poor drainage, medium drought resistance and low pest resistance.
Pruning and maintenance remain part of the recommendation: remove low, diseased or dead branches, clear fallen plant debris, retain horizontal and vertical spacing, and water and prune to avoid accumulating deadwood. For a planting plan, check the mature tree and the maintained LZ3 arrangement together; the species name and favorable grade alone leave those conditions unanswered.
Form
tree
Mature height
~25 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
high
Rated in
eastern US
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Documented in AL, DC, DE, FL, GA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, OH, PA, SC, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, FL, GA, MS, NC, SC.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 6a; 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 prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Crataegus aestivalis · exact match.
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 88980, 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 recommendation)
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.
