Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Topel holly has mixed fire-resistance evidence: one whole-plant burn study rated it low, while three regional guides raise concern.
The USDA Forest Service and NIST result carries the most direct testing: large-scale calorimetry of whole plants placed topel holly in the low-flammability cluster. That cluster was the recommended end of a comparison that sorted 34 ornamentals into low, moderate and high groups. It is a meaningful burn-test result, but it reflects a controlled test and a southeastern study rather than a universal landscape rule.
The field-oriented guidance points the other way. Ohio State University Extension gave the plant an H, the second-highest band on its five-point expert scale. Virginia Cooperative Extension also gave it H, the highest band on its three-point scale for how fire-prone plants are. A USDA-led eastern plant selector placed it at “At Risk (3)” on a four-step scale running from Firewise to Not Firewise. These are curated regional judgments, not results from the NIST burn setup.
Topel holly is a roughly 20-foot tree in the Aquifoliaceae family, suited to full sun and hardy to USDA zone 7a. Its identity does not settle the conflict. The strongest practical reading is that it performed well in one whole-plant experiment but has not earned consistent support from landscape fire programs. Treat “fire resistant” as disputed, not established.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.
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 prints 7 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Ilex x attenuata hybrids · 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.
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] (mid-scale rating)
Firewise Landscaping: keep 30 ft from the home (Zone 3) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (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.
