Cupressus glabra 'Carolina Safire' (accepted: Cupressus arizonica) · Cupressaceae · all Cupressus records · also called Carolina Safire Arizona cypress
The Place chip compares this record with your lot.
Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Piute cypress is not fire resistant; two fire-safety sources place it among plants to avoid.
The USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area and state Firewise programs place Cupressus glabra ‘Carolina Safire’ in the least favorable category of their four-step scale. They describe the cultivar as an upright evergreen with blue-white foliage. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension in Travis County reaches the same practical conclusion, listing Arizona cypress under Hesperocyparis arizonica among highly flammable plants to consider avoiding in all zones. Its guidance ties that warning to volatile oils or growth habit.
Piute cypress is a low-water tree in the cypress family that grows in full sun and reaches about 35 feet at maturity. It is hardy to USDA zone 6a, but cold hardiness is separate from the fire ratings. With both sources warning against it, the sound placement choice is to keep Piute cypress away from structures.
Travis County, Austin area (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2024-01-16
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension publishes this page through its Travis County horticulture program. FireApproved publishes 56 exact owners and retains the source's zone and warning conditions. This is county/Austin regional context, not a second statewide Texas table or site clearance.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ, CA, DC, DE, MD, NJ, NM, NV, OH, PA, PR, TX, UT, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; 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.
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: 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 15078, 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 avoid rating)
Firewise Landscaping: Trees; High Flammability Plants to Consider Avoiding for all Zones [Travis County Firewise page sections] (with its avoid rating)
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.
“High Flammability Plants to Consider Avoiding for all Zones”
Listed as Arizona Cypress — Hesperocyparis arizonica. The page says Zone 1 entries should be restricted to zones 2 or 3; all-zone entries are highly flammable due to volatile oils or growth habit.
