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Sweetbells leucothoe

Leucothoe racemosa (accepted: Eubotrys racemosa) · Ericaceae · all Leucothoe records

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Highly flammable — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context
No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence
0 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Virginia / Mid-Atlantic
Maintenance
No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) · Official scoped edition
    • VA; partial normalized coverage · 2009-04-15

      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, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, LA, MA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, NY, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA.
Native range
The legacy compatibility field lists VA in native range; its field-level source was not retained.
Introduced / established
No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status
Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here
No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
Broader regional context
Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context
Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.
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.

Sweetbells leucothoe (Leucothoe racemosa)
Photo: (c) inbetweenbays, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.
Form
shrub
USDA hardiness
Minimum 3b; upper limit not documented
Mature height
~13 ft
Water need
moderate
Legacy native field
VA · field-level source not retained
Grows in
AL, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, LA, MA +11
Rated in
Virginia / Mid-Atlantic
Uses
screen
Family
Ericaceae
Evidence
1 cited source

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.

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.

Avoids (1)

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

High bush blueberry
Vaccinium corymbosum Common witchhazel
Hamamelis virginiana Winterberry holly
Ilex verticillata Southern arrowood viburnum
Viburnum dentatum Summersweet
Clethra alnifolia Mapleleaf viburnum
Viburnum acerifolia

Fire-resistant shrubs listed above

Same genus in the directory · the Leucothoe group page

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

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

Leucothoe racemosa (Sweetbells leucothoe). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/leucothoe-racemosa/. Last verified 2026-08-23.