Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Lavell hawthorn is rated fire resistant because two extension services place it in their low-flammability categories.
Ohio State University Extension gives Lavell hawthorn an “L” rating, the second-lowest band on its five-point scale. Both “L” and “VL” fall on the recommended side of that system. The rating comes from the authors’ expert experience. Ohio State also describes the tree as lightly armed, sensitive to disease and windthrow, and having a moderate service life, but those are landscape considerations rather than explanations of its flammability score.
NC State Extension independently tags the tree as low flammability. Its plant toolbox uses four bands from low through extreme, with low treated as suitable for fire-resistant landscaping. The toolbox does not document who assigned its flammability values, so its finding is strongest as support for Ohio State rather than as proof by itself.
The two services therefore agree on the practical verdict, but the foundation remains limited expert guidance rather than a reported burn measurement. Lavell hawthorn is a fire-resistant choice under both systems, with more certainty about the recommendation than about the physical reasons behind it.
Form
tree
Rated in
North Carolina / southeastern US; Ohio / Midwest
Uses
specimen
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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 OH.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4a–8b.
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.
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.
4a–8b explicit range · half zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Crataegus x lavalleei · source identifier match.
Source location: Crataegus x lavalleei profile, USDA Plant Hardiness Zone field.
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.
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: crataegus-x-lavalleei [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (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.
