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Red tip

Photinia x fraseri (accepted: Photinia fraseri) · Rosaceae · all Photinia records

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: Highly flammable — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: 2 conditions stated in cited fire-evidence rows.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Marin County, California; Provence, southeastern France; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 2 scopes across 2 cited fire sources

Fire-Resistant Plants Common to Marin County · Official scoped edition
- Marin County (CA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2019-01-01
  The publication is explicitly limited to plants common to Marin County. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as Marin regional context while retaining its placement, spacing, irrigation, and maintenance boundary. It is not statewide California guidance or parcel suitability.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) · Official scoped edition
- VA; partial normalized coverage · 2009-04-15
  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 DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

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: No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
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.

Red tip (Photinia x fraseri) — Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: shrub
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable source rows; no primary zone projected
Mature height: ~12 ft
Light: Full sun
Grows in: DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV
Rated in: British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Marin County, California; Provence, southeastern France +2
Family: Rosaceae
Evidence: 6 cited sources

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record photinia-x-fraseri · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Photinia x fraseri · 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.

Conditions in the fire evidence

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

green: Flammability of some ornamental species in wildland-urban interfaces in southeastern France evidence row
irrigated: Fire-Resistant Plants Common to Marin County evidence row

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)
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ extended zone and beyond [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Guía de pirojardinería: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (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.

Avoids (2)

Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) — Virginia Cooperative Extension / Virginia Tech (Appleton, Frenzel, Hillegass, Lyons, Steward — Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force) · 2009 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Very susceptible to leaf spot disease.
Flammability of some ornamental species in wildland-urban interfaces in southeastern France — Environmental Management (Ganteaume, Jappiot, Lampin, Guijarro, Hernando) · 2013 · original source Primary evidence Lab-tested lineage: inia-madrid-tree

“Highly flammable cluster” · score 4 (valette-0-5-live-leaf) · condition: green

Live leaves were tested by epiradiator for ignition frequency, time to ignition, and flaming duration.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“MODERATELY Firewise (2)”

New growth is bright red.

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

Snowberry
Symphoricarpos albus

Pomegranate
Punica granatum

High bush blueberry
Vaccinium corymbosum

American beautyberry
Callicarpa americana

Common witchhazel
Hamamelis virginiana

Winterberry holly
Ilex verticillata

Fire-resistant shrubs listed above

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

Profiles: GBIF ·

Photinia x fraseri (Red tip). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/photinia-x-fraseri/. Last verified 2026-08-23.