Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Littleleaf mock orange has mixed fire evidence, with favorable regional listings but no settled primary verdict.
New Mexico gives the clearest limits on where its recommendation applies. The Forestry Division's FireWise table marks Philadelphus microphyllus yes at the printed elevations of 6,000, 7,000, 8,000, and 9,000-plus feet. It says no at 4,000 feet and leaves 5,000 feet unknown or doubtful. These elevation codes concern the use of the shrub within that guide.
Fremont County also lists littleleaf mock orange, placing it in its shrubs section. The county characterizes its Firewise plants collectively as generally low-growing, relatively moist, and low in debris. That group description should remain separate from a measured claim about this particular shrub.
The two listings are favorable evidence for fire-conscious landscaping in their regional contexts. The New Mexico elevation distinctions provide a useful boundary when considering this member of the hydrangea family.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~15 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fremont County (WY footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-02-25
The source identifies itself as the Fremont County Firewise Plant List. FireApproved publishes its 92 exact source owners as Fremont County regional context. No methodology, current county endorsement, statewide Wyoming scope, or site-specific suitability is inferred.
New Mexico Forestry Division publishes this as its FireWise Plant List for New Mexico. FireApproved accounts for all 140 printed rows and publishes 95 exact same-rank owners already represented in the directory; 29 exact taxa without an existing record, 14 unresolved spellings or higher-rank matches, one compound taxon cell, and one species row whose only apparent owner has an infraspecific printed identity remain held. Every published row retains the source's Y, N, ?, or blank elevation cells. Publication scope does not erase those elevation limits or establish suitability for every New Mexico site.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, TX, UT, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, TX, UT, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4b; 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 location: PlantCharacteristics record 88469, 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.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 4, Shrubs, p4-r22 [nm-emnrd-firewise-table-row] (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.
“Fremont County Firewise Plant List — Philadelphus microphyllus — Little-Leaf Mockorange”
Listed in the source's Shrubs section; the page describes its listed Firewise plants as generally low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original sourceCorroborationCompilationlineage: csu-nmsu-firewise
“FireWise Plant List for New Mexico”
Listed as Philadelphus microphyllus (Little-leaf mock orange) in Shrubs. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=N, 5,000 ft=?, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=Y, 8,000 ft=Y, 9,000+ ft=Y. Water need: M; sun/shade: S; mature height: 2-3’; approximate bloom: Jun.
