Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
No, inkberry is not fire resistant; six assessments classify it as highly flammable or among the most flammable species studied.
Direct fire testing gives the warning practical weight. USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station and NIST researchers burned whole ornamental shrubs using large-scale calorimetry and placed inkberry in the high-flammability group. The International Journal of Wildland Fire named inkberry among the most flammable species studied.
Extension services reached the same conclusion in North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. North Carolina’s cooperative extension service and USFWS rated inkberry high on a four-band scale, and NC State Extension again rated it high in 2025. Ohio State University Extension assigned it H, the fourth band of its five-band scale. Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Tech also assigned it H on their three-point scale. Inkberry is a shrub in the Aquifoliaceae family, reaches about eight feet at maturity, and has high water needs. None of those facts softens the repeated flammability findings: the direct tests and extension ratings support keeping inkberry away from structures.
The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.
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.
Virginia Cooperative Extension's publication opens with Virginia wildfire conditions, identifies its Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force, and labels plants native to Virginia. FireApproved publishes 306 exact source owners. Publication scope does not establish parcel suitability or current endorsement of this archived 2009 list.
Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DE, FL, GA, LA, MA, MD, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, SC, TX, VA.
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.
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 location: PlantCharacteristics record 74928, 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.
Firewise Landscaping: do not plant within 5 ft of structures (keep out of Zone 1) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (with its avoid rating)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: ilex-glabra [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (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.
39 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Hough1969: Hough, W. A. (1969). Caloric Value of Some Forest Fuels of the Southern United States. Res. Note SE-120. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southeastern Forest Experiment Station.
FLAMITS record 5006; fuel all; site Hough1969-6; sampling march.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 5213”
FLAMITS record 5039; fuel live; site Hough1969-2; sampling august.
Primary study McAllister2017: McAllister, S., & Weise, D. (2017). Effects of season on ignition of live wildland fuels using the forced ignition and flame spread test apparatus. Combustion Science and Technology, 189, 231-247.
Shared row context: Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device scale wind tunnel; site McAllister2017-3.
Shared measurement context: sampling may.
“time to flaming (s): 12.46”
FLAMITS record 9151.
“time to flaming (s): 25.14”
FLAMITS record 9161.
“time to flaming (s): 14.69”
FLAMITS record 9152; sampling june.
“time to flaming (s): 17.71”
FLAMITS record 9153; sampling july.
“time to flaming (s): 17.5”
FLAMITS record 9154; sampling august.
“time to flaming (s): 21.82”
FLAMITS record 9155; sampling september.
“time to flaming (s): 20.36”
FLAMITS record 9156; sampling october.
“time to flaming (s): 21.44”
FLAMITS record 9157; sampling november.
“time to flaming (s): 22.99”
FLAMITS record 9158; sampling december.
“time to flaming (s): 21.74”
FLAMITS record 9159; sampling march.
“time to flaming (s): 23.37”
FLAMITS record 9160; sampling april.
Primary study Shafizadeh1977: Shafizadeh, F., Chin, P. P., & DeGroot, W. F. (1977). Effective heat content of green forest fuels. Forest Science, 23, 81-89.
Shared row context: Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying yes; device thermal analyzer; site Shafizadeh1977-1; sampling ND.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 1930”
FLAMITS record 12465.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 325.56”
FLAMITS record 12466.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 868.22”
FLAMITS record 12467.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 690.05”
FLAMITS record 12468.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 712.76”
FLAMITS record 12469.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 765.71”
FLAMITS record 12470.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 257.51”
FLAMITS record 12471.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 2231”
FLAMITS record 12472.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 289.97”
FLAMITS record 12473.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 648.31”
FLAMITS record 12474.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 483.91”
FLAMITS record 12475.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 454.25”
FLAMITS record 12476.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 457.84”
FLAMITS record 12477.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 199.81”
FLAMITS record 12478.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 3902”
FLAMITS record 12479.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 9751”
FLAMITS record 12480.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 279.76”
FLAMITS record 12481.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 409.76”
FLAMITS record 12482.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 319.61”
FLAMITS record 12483.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 336.85”
FLAMITS record 12484.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 166.9”
FLAMITS record 12485.
“time to flaming (s): 11.65”
FLAMITS record 17479; Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site McAllister2014-3; sampling ND. Primary study McAllister2014: McAllister S., & Finney, M. (2014). Convection Ignition of Live Forest Fuels. Fire Safety Science - Proceedings of the eleventh International Symposium 11th conference. Christchurch, New Zealand.
Primary study Safdari2018: Safdari, M.-S., Rahmati, M., Amini, E., Howarth, J. E., Berryhill, J. P., Dietenberger, M., Fletcher, T. H. (2018). Characterization of pyrolysis products from fast pyrolysis of live and dead vegetation native to the Southern United States. Fuel, 229, 151166.
Shared row context: Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device flat flame burner; site Safdari2018-1; sampling ND.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 5004.78564”
FLAMITS record 17997.
“calorific value (kcal/kg): 5382.41512”
FLAMITS record 18011.
Primary study Pickett2010: Pickett, B. M., Isackson, C., Wunder, R., Fletcher, T. H., Butler, B. W., & Weise, D. R. (2010). Experimental measurements during combustion of moist individual foliage samples. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 19, 153-162 .
Shared row context: Combustibility measurement; plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device flat flame burner; site Pickett2010-3; sampling ND.
