Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Banana carries an “At Risk” rating, while its overall fire-resistance evidence remains mixed.
The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs assign banana Firewise Rating 3. Their four-band scale runs from Firewise at 1 through Moderately Firewise and At Risk to Not Firewise at 4. Banana therefore receives a cautionary rating, though not the scale’s lowest classification.
The stated concern is large dead foliage that can become burning material in winter. The selector requires maintenance around structures: remove dead leaves, twigs, and needles; prune dead, diseased, and low branches; preserve vertical and horizontal spacing; and water and prune plants so deadwood does not accumulate on the plant or ground. These measures directly address the material identified as the hazard.
Banana, Musa spp., belongs to the Musaceae family, reaches about 10 feet at maturity, and grows in full sun. Those growing characteristics do not change the selector’s warning about winter dead foliage.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~10 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
eastern US
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
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 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Musa spp. · 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 2 — 5–10 ft from the structure; maintained lawn or fuel breaks, with easily ignited evergreens avoided [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale 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.
