Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Sourwood is fire resistant, with every assessment rating it low in flammability or identifying it as a Firewise plant.
Across six assessments, sourwood’s fire ratings point in the same direction. North Carolina’s extension guidance rated it low under both its earlier four-tier scale and its newer three-tier scale, while the live Plant Toolbox repeats the low-flammability tag. Ohio State placed it at L on a five-point scale, a rating that supports recommendation. Virginia Tech also gave it L, the low end of its three-point scale. The University of Tennessee included it in its binary Firewise plant list.
That agreement matters because the institutions use different systems and write for different regions. One scale runs from low to extreme, another from very low to very high, and Tennessee simply lists plants it recommends. Each system reaches a favorable conclusion about sourwood.
Sourwood is a roughly 40-foot tree in the heath family, native to the Southeast and Northeast and hardy to USDA zone 5a. It grows in full sun and is described as low-water, but other site needs still matter. Ohio State says it requires acid soil, suits a woodland edge, and is intolerant of urban conditions. Virginia Tech says it is not resistant to drought or air pollution. Its low flammability makes it a sound fire-conscious choice, provided the site also fits those limits.
Form
tree
Mature height
~40 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
low
Rated in
Global; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; NC; North Carolina +5
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Global; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Ohio / Midwest; Tennessee; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 7 scopes across 5 cited fire sources
Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
NJ; partial normalized coverage
New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.
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.
University of Tennessee Extension SP685 is Tennessee landscape guidance and publishes 78 represented plant owners. Most table rows are a carrier of Virginia Firescapes rather than an independent rating; Tennessee source scope does not change that lineage or establish site suitability.
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 AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, TN, VA, WV.
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.
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.
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.
Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Oxydendrum arboreum · 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.
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)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: oxydendrum-arboreum [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Deciduous Trees [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (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.
Listed as Oxydendrum arboreum (Sourwood, Sorrel Tree). The source says listed species exhibit stronger resistance to ignition by wildfires. Source comments: Not resistant to drought or air pollution
Largest form of the ericaceous family. Showy terminal cream colored flower panicles in mid-summer. Prominent tan seed clusters in winter. Bright red fall foliage color.
Listed without a rating (5)Corroboration (5 rows from 1 source)
5 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Varner2021: Varner, J. M., Kane, J. M., Kreye, J. K., & Shearman, T. M. (2021). Litter Flammability of 50 Southeastern North American Tree Species: Evidence for Mesophication Gradients Across Multiple Ecosystems. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 4, 727042. Primary-study method: freshly fallen litter was oven-dried at 50–60°C for at least 24 hours to constant mass; each trial used a 15 g dry litter fuelbed, with five to seven trials per species.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Varner2021-1; sampling ND.
