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Keep sweet osmanthus away from structures: its classification is highly flammable, despite conflicting government ratings.
The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs rate it “Not Firewise”, the most fire-prone category on their four-step scale for the eastern United States. The Australian Capital Territory government reaches the opposite conclusion, marking Osmanthus fragrans “Fire Retardant: Yes” in its Canberra plant selector. The selectors use different scales: one assigns a Firewise category, while the other records a yes-or-no attribute.
A separate laboratory measurement adds detail without breaking the tie. Fresh, live leaves that had not been predried took 57.33 seconds to begin flaming in a calorimeter. That number describes ignition delay for leaves under the study conditions; it does not by itself classify the whole tree for a landscape. The FLAMITS database preserves such measurements without applying one pass-or-fail threshold across different variables, devices and plant parts.
Hardy to USDA zone 7a, sweet osmanthus is a full-sun tree in Oleaceae, with a mature height of about 25 feet. The Canberra rating is genuine counterevidence, but it does not cancel the Firewise warning. The resulting classification is highly flammable, making separation from structures the prudent choice.
Australian Capital Territory, Australia; Global; eastern US
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
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 7 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Osmanthus fragrans · 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] (with its avoid rating)
Canberra Plant Selector: filtered result page 20 [canberra-selector] (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.
17 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Liu2013: Liu, M., Yi, L., Yu, S., Zhou, G., Jiang, H., & Li, X. (2013). Combustibility of fresh leaves of 26 forest species in China. Journal of Tropical Forest Science, 25, 528-536.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device calorimeter; site Liu2013-1; sampling ND.
Primary study Tao2020: Tao, J. J. (2020). Study on the transition mechanism for broadleaf foliage from smoldering to flaming combustion under external radiant heat flux. Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery, 10, 765-773.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device calorimeter; site Tao2020-1; sampling ND.
