Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
No, yaupon is not fire resistant; six assessments classify it as highly flammable and unsuitable near structures.
The strongest finding comes from whole-plant burn testing by the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station and NIST. Researchers burned 34 ornamental shrubs in a large-scale calorimeter and sorted them into low, moderate, and high flammability groups. Yaupon landed in the high group, one of only four shrubs to do so. That result concerns the behavior of the whole shrub, not just detached leaves or a general judgment based on appearance.
Extension guidance across several states points the same way. North Carolina’s four-band system and its newer three-band survey both rate yaupon high. Virginia Tech assigns it H, the highest category on its three-point scale. Oklahoma State gives a reason for its warning: yaupon contains highly flammable oils and resins, and the extension service says not to grow it near a home or other structure. North Carolina’s live Plant Toolbox also tags it high, though that tag serves only as corroboration because the Toolbox does not identify who assigned its values.
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.
Oklahoma State University Extension frames the article around statewide Oklahoma heat, drought, wildfire, and plant selection and publishes five unambiguous genus owners. Ambiguous common names remain excluded, and the prose examples do not establish suitability for every Oklahoma site.
Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14
The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.
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.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, LA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, OH, OK, PA, SC, TX, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, NC, OK, SC, TX, VA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7b; 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 prints 8 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Ilex vomitoria · 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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 74982, 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)
Firewise Plantings Can Help Protect Property: do not plant near a home or other structure [okstate-near-structures] (with its avoid rating)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: ilex-vomitoria [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (with its avoid rating)
Firewise Landscaping: Small trees/Large Shrubs [Travis County Firewise page sections] (with its avoid rating)
Firewise Plant Guide: Shrubs [Sun City plant-table 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.
“Plants to Avoid for Zone 1 (within 30′ of Structure)”
Listed as Holly, Yaupon — Ilex vomitoria. 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.
The table rates Holly, Yaupon — Ilex vomitoria high for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
15 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.
Primary study Tiller2020a: Tiller, M., Oswald, B. P., Frantzen, A., Conway, W., & Hung, I. (2020a). Initial investigation of seasonal flammability of three invasive East Texas forest understory fuels using thermogravimetric analysis. Forest ReseaRCH, 9, 230.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device thermal analyzer; site Tiller2020a-1.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 205.39”
FLAMITS record 13115; Ignitability measurement; sampling august.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 183.62”
FLAMITS record 13119; Ignitability measurement; sampling february.
“burning duration (s): 652.8”
FLAMITS record 13122; Sustainability measurement; sampling august.
“burning duration (s): 759”
FLAMITS record 13126; Sustainability measurement; sampling february.
Primary study Tiller2020b: Tiller, M. B., Oswald, B. P., Frantzen, A., Hung, I.-K., Jerez, S., & Weng, Y. (2020). Spatial and seasonal flammability comparisons of native and exotic plants in the Post Oak Savannah, Blackland Prairie, and Pineywoods Ecoregions of Texas. Asheville, NC, USA.
Shared row context: Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying yes; device thermal analyzer; site Tiller2020b-1; sampling august and february.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 183.32”
FLAMITS record 13129.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 185.34”
FLAMITS record 13132.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 186.45”
FLAMITS record 13135.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 206.39”
FLAMITS record 13138.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 198.55”
FLAMITS record 13141.
“temperature at flaming (°C): 200.36”
FLAMITS record 13144.
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.
