Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Dawn redwood is best treated as highly flammable and kept away from structures, despite one moderate Firewise rating.
Ohio State’s extension service rates the tree H, one step below the top of its five-band flammability scale, while describing it as a deciduous conifer that prefers moist, well-drained soil. Virginia Cooperative Extension also rates it H, the highest category on its three-point scale, under the same soil preference. Together, those findings support a clear warning rather than a marginal judgment.
Catalonia’s fire-adapted gardening guide reaches a similar practical conclusion, rating dawn redwood “desaconsejada,” or discouraged. Its method considers fire research alongside fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and fire-service experience. The USDA Forest Service’s eastern plant selector is less severe, calling the tree moderately Firewise, the second-most favorable category on its four-point scale, and noting that it was found only in a landscape environment. That is a genuine difference, but not a clean reversal of the broader advice.
A laboratory observation adds context without settling the disagreement: live leaves collected in spring took 16 seconds to produce flames in a calorimeter. That number describes ignition under one test setup, not a universal safe interval outdoors. For a tree that reaches about 75 feet and needs high water, the safer placement decision follows the repeated warnings: give dawn redwood ample separation from buildings.
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, NY, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
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.
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: 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 15274, 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 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: not suitable inside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (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.
Metasequoia glyptostroboides is rated “DESACONSEJADA” 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.
3 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Jervis2012: Jervis, F. X. (2012). Application of fire calorimetry to understand factors affecting flammability of cellulosic material: Pine needles, tree leaves and chipboard. PhD. Dissertation. University of Edinburgh.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device calorimeter; site Jervis2012-2; sampling spring.
