FireApproved

United States / Grow / downy hawthorn

downy hawthorn (Crataegus mollis)
Photo: (c) Cecil Smith, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

downy hawthorn

Crataegus mollis · Rosaceae · all Crataegus records · 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.

Downy hawthorn is rated fire resistant, though the support comes from two expert-curated extension assessments.

The agreement is useful, but it is a modest basis for choosing a tree near a home.

Ohio State’s extension service places Crataegus mollis in the L, or low, band of its five-point flammability scale. On that scale, low and very low are the bands the authors recommend, and the ratings reflect their expert experience. NC State Extension also places the species under its low-flammability tag, which falls on the recommended side of its scale. NC State does not document who assigned those values, so its tag works best as corroboration rather than the sole foundation for the verdict.

Downy hawthorn is a tree in the Rosaceae family, native across the southeastern, south-central, north-central, and northeastern United States. Ohio State also flags sensitivity to disease and windthrow, moderate armature, and moderate service life. Those are separate landscape cautions; they do not change its low flammability rating. The practical reading is favorable but measured: the extension services agree that downy hawthorn has low flammability, while the verdict remains based on limited primary evidence.

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.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
North Carolina / southeastern US; Ohio / Midwest
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) · Official scoped edition
    • OH; partial normalized coverage · 2006-03-01

      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 AL, AR, CT, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MI, MN, MO, MS, ND, NE, OH, OK, SD, TN, TX, WI.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 3a–8b.

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

20

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

20 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Dakota (ND)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Wisconsin (WI)

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)
Same genus in the directory · the Crataegus group page

Last verified 2026-08-26. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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Crataegus mollis (Downy Hawthorn). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/crataegus-mollis/. Last verified 2026-08-26.