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Oleander

Nerium oleander · Apocynaceae

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
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
1 condition stated in cited fire-evidence rows.
Fire ecology context
No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence
11 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Austin, Texas; California; Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; Catalonia, Spain; Córdoba, southern Spain; Georgetown, Texas; Global; Japan; Mediterranean southeast France; North Carolina / southeastern US; Provence, southeastern France; Tasmania, Australia; Turkey; Yavapai County, Arizona; eastern US; southeastern US
Maintenance
No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.
Typed publication scope: 4 scopes across 4 cited fire sources
  • Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants · Official scoped edition
    • CA; partial normalized coverage · 1997-07-01

      The UC Forest Products Laboratory says the guide covers properties of common California landscaping plants and was prepared for California fire agencies. FireApproved publishes 130 exact owners at historical California publication scope. The report is a 1997 compilation, not a current endorsement, site rating, or independent test of every row.

  • Firewise Plant Guide · Official scoped edition
    • Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14

      The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.

  • Firewise Landscaping (Travis County) · Official scoped edition
    • Travis County, Austin area (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2024-01-16

      Texas A&M AgriLife Extension publishes this page through its Travis County horticulture program. FireApproved publishes 56 exact owners and retains the source's zone and warning conditions. This is county/Austin regional context, not a second statewide Texas table or site clearance.

  • Fire-Resistant and Fire-Prone Plants Common to Yavapai County (Bulletin 34) · Official scoped edition
    • Yavapai County (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2025-03-14

      University of Arizona Cooperative Extension authors Bulletin 34 for Yavapai County. FireApproved publishes 198 exact source owners from its resistant and prone tables and keeps the county boundary visible. County publication scope is regional Arizona context, never statewide scope.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AZ, CA, DC, DE, FL, GA, LA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, OH, PA, PR, SC, TX, UT, VI, WV.
Native range
No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established
11 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 8a; 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
2 ecological invasive reports; set a location to distinguish exact from regional context.
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.

Oleander (Nerium oleander)
Photo: (c) zebedeugalinha, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.
Form
shrub
USDA hardiness
Minimum 8a; upper limit not documented
Mature height
~8 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
low
Grows in
AL, AZ, CA, DC, DE, FL, GA, LA +12
Rated in
Austin, Texas; California; Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; Catalonia, Spain +12
Family
Apocynaceae
Evidence
47 cited sources

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.

Current native

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

11

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

11 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • California (CA)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Hawaii (HI)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Texas (TX)

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.

Conditions in the fire evidence

These describe tested or rated plant material. They are not horticultural maintenance instructions.

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.

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.

Recommends (7)

Avoids (4)

Mid-scale / conditional (5)

Listed without a rating (31)

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

Elderberry
Sambucus canadensis Chastetree
Vitex agnus-castus Pomegranate
Punica granatum Buttonbush
Cephalanthus occidentalis Indian coralberry
Symphoricarpos orbiculatus High bush blueberry
Vaccinium corymbosum

Fire-resistant shrubs listed above

Same genus in the directory
  • Oleander (Nerium — awaiting evidence)

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

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

Nerium oleander (Oleander). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/nerium-oleander/. Last verified 2026-08-23.