Home / Plants / Grow / Dawn redwood

Dawn redwood

Metasequoia glyptostroboides · Cupressaceae

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: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Catalonia, Spain; Global; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 2 scopes across 2 cited fire sources

Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) · Official scoped edition
- OH; partial normalized coverage · 2006-03-01
  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 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 DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, WV.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: 1 sourced range or established record; set a location to match them. 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: 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.

Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) — Photo: (c) Colin Meurk, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) (CC BY-SA), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: tree
USDA hardiness: Minimum 5b; upper limit not documented
Mature height: ~75 ft
Light: Full sun
Water need: high
Grows in: DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, WV
Rated in: Catalonia, Spain; Global; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic +1
Family: Cupressaceae
Evidence: 7 cited sources

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record metasequoia-glyptostroboides · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Metasequoia glyptostroboides · 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.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record MEGL8 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 5b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -13°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Metasequoia glyptostroboides · source identifier match.

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.

Avoids (3)

Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) — Ohio State University Extension (Sydnor, Steward, Kloss / Ohio DNR Division of Forestry) · 2006 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Prefers moist, well-drained soils; pH tolerant; deciduous conifer.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) — Virginia Cooperative Extension / Virginia Tech (Appleton, Frenzel, Hillegass, Lyons, Steward — Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force) · 2009 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Species has existed for at least 50 million years. Prefers moist , well-drained soils.
Guía de pirojardinería — guía práctica de jardinería adaptada a la prevención de incendios forestales — Diputació de Girona and Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya · 2020 Spanish edition · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: elvira-hernando-1989 + cooperem-tree

“DESACONSEJADA”

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.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“MODERATELY Firewise (2)”

Only found in landscape environment.

Listed without a rating (3)

FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database — Dryad / Global Ecology and Biogeography · Dryad version 9 · original source Corroboration Trait database lineage: meta-aggregator

3 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
- “time to flaming (s): 16” · score 16 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 5293; Ignitability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device calorimeter; site Jervis2012-2; sampling spring. 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.
- “calorific value (kcal/kg): 3991.39” · score 3991.39 (FLAMITS — calorific value (kcal/kg))
  
  FLAMITS record 5294; Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device calorimeter; site Jervis2012-2; sampling spring. 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.
- “flaming duration (s): 25” · score 25 (FLAMITS — flaming duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 5295; Sustainability measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device calorimeter; site Jervis2012-2; sampling spring. 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.

Fire-resistant trees instead

Post oak
Quercus stellata

Red oak
Quercus rubra

Basswood
Tilia americana

Red maple
Acer rubrum

Wild black cherry
Prunus serotina

White oak
Quercus alba

Fire-resistant trees listed above

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

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

Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Dawn redwood). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/metasequoia-glyptostroboides/. Last verified 2026-08-23.