Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Dwarf honeysuckle is rated fire resistant overall, but one eastern U.S.
program places it in an at-risk category. Two of three assessments are favorable.
Ohio State’s extension service rates it L, the low band on its five-point flammability scale and a recommended result. Assuming care suited to this shrub, Diputació de Girona and Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya call it “very recommended” for gardens. Their judgment combines fire research and fire-service experience with considerations of origin, invasiveness, fuel structure, and maintenance. The USDA Forest Service’s northeastern program disagrees, rating it “At Risk,” the second-least favorable category on its four-point scale.
These findings answer somewhat different questions. Ohio State focuses on flammability, while the Catalan method combines fire behavior with wider landscaping concerns. The eastern program also describes the shrub as becoming invasive in natural woodlands, whereas Ohio State says it appears not to be invasive and rarely fruits. It has separately been flagged as invasive in one jurisdiction, so local rules still matter.
Dwarf honeysuckle is a roughly 10-foot shrub suited to full sun and hardy to USDA zone 5a. The balance supports calling it fire resistant, but not unanimously so. Its eastern at-risk rating and conflicting invasiveness findings make it a qualified choice rather than an uncomplicated one.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~10 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
Catalonia, Spain; Ohio / Midwest; eastern US
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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 CT, DC, DE, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
21 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
1 legal-list record; the Place chip matches exact scope.
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
1 ecological invasive report.
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 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Lonicera xylosteum · 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)
Guía de pirojardinería: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (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.
Lonicera xylosteum is rated “MUY RECOMENDADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
