United States / Grow / northern bush honeysuckle

northern bush honeysuckle

Diervilla lonicera · Caprifoliaceae · all Diervilla records · also called Bush-honeysuckle · Wikipedia

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.

Yes, northern bush honeysuckle is rated fire resistant, with several agencies supporting that conclusion for eastern and Midwestern landscapes.

Across five assessments, Ohio State’s extension service gives the shrub low flammability on its five-band scale, a rating it maps to recommendation. Dovetail Partners also rates it low under a plant-selection method used for northeastern Minnesota and permits low-flammability plants 3 to 30 feet from a building. Alongside their finding of stronger resistance to wildfire ignition, agencies in Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia note that the shrub tolerates exposed sites.

The Maine Forest Service likewise includes northern bush honeysuckle among fire-resistant plants, but only for landscaping 30 to 100 feet from a structure. A USDA Forest Service and state Firewise selector is slightly more restrained: it rates the shrub Moderately Firewise, or 2 on a four-point scale whose best rating is 1. That does not overturn the other findings, but it keeps the conclusion from becoming a claim that the plant will not burn.

Northern bush honeysuckle is a low-water shrub that reaches about five feet at maturity and grows in part sun. The practical reading is reassuring but bounded: agencies consistently treat it as a comparatively suitable fire-resistant landscaping plant, while their ratings and placement rules do not promise safety under every fire condition.

Form: shrub
Mature height: ~5 ft
Light: Part sun
Water need: low
Rated in: Maine; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; Ohio / Midwest; eastern US +1

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: 4 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Maine; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; Ohio / Midwest; eastern US; northeastern Minnesota
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 6 scopes across 4 cited fire sources

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · Official scoped edition
- Northeastern Minnesota (MN footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2017-01-01
  Dovetail applies the UF/IFAS flammability key to northeastern Minnesota natives and publishes placement for 38 exact source owners. FireApproved exposes those rows only as northeastern Minnesota regional context and preserves the 3-to-30-foot versus beyond-30-foot source placement.
Firewise Landscaping Plants (Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia editions) · Official scoped edition
- MD; partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-08
  Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
- NJ; partial normalized coverage
  New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
- WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
  West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
Maine fire-resistant plant list · Official scoped edition
- ME; partial normalized coverage · 2013-10-23
  Maine Forest Service presents a partial list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. FireApproved publishes only 39 unique exact current/accepted matches plus Rhus typhina from the source's explicit parenthetical; unresolved, abbreviated, misspelled, absent, and duplicate-owner rows remain held.
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, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in CT, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness: 2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

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.

Current native

24

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

24 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Connecticut (CT)
Delaware (DE)
Georgia (GA)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Maine (ME)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
North Carolina (NC)
North Dakota (ND)
New Hampshire (NH)
New Jersey (NJ)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Rhode I. (RI)
Tennessee (TN)
Virginia (VA)
Vermont (VT)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)

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.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · record table-2-row-3 · 2017 · as of 2026-08-26

3–9 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Diervilla lonicera · exact match.

Source location: Table 2 row 3, Hardiness Zones column.
Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record diervilla-lonicera · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Diervilla lonicera · 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.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record DILO · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 4b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -23°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Diervilla lonicera · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 42692, 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 2 — 5–10 ft from the structure; maintained lawn or fuel breaks, with easily ignited evergreens avoided [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern…: plantable 3-30 ft from a building [Dovetail Partners planting distance] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Deciduous Shrubs [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (with its recommendation)
Maine fire-resistant plant list: Shrubs, page 1: Bush-honeysuckle - Diervilla lonicera [Maine Forest Service list section and page] (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.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“MODERATELY Firewise (2)”

Native shrub with twin yellow flowers.

Guides that discuss this plant

The resin question at a Minnesota lake cabin

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Diervilla lonicera (Bush-honeysuckle). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/diervilla-lonicera/. Last verified 2026-08-23.