Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Pieris japonica anchors conflict. On pieris japonica, Protecting your home is the next pieris japonica fact. The banner is not the whole file — Pieris japonica. conflict does not replace Protecting your home on pieris japonica.
On pieris japonica, Pieris japonica also carries 1 ecological invasive for pieris japonica. On pieris japonica, Pieris japonica also carries hardiness rows for pieris japonica. On pieris japonica, Pieris japonica also carries same form alternatives for pieris japonica.
Use evidence on pieris japonica for pieris japonica. Use hardiness on pieris japonica for pieris japonica. The citations remain on Pieris japonica for pieris japonica.
Australian Capital Territory, Australia; British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Dorset, United Kingdom; Japan; Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
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.
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
Introduced / established
3 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–7.
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: Pieris japonica · 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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 65309, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
Not used for comparison: USDA PLANTS provides no duration for this record, so perennial hardiness applicability is unresolved.
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] (with its avoid rating)
Firewise Landscaping: do not plant within 5 ft of structures (keep out of Zone 1) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (with its avoid rating)
Guía de pirojardinería: suitable inside or outside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its recommendation)
Tree fire-protection classification in Hito to Shinrin: アセビ — Table 10-2 [tadaki-kira-1982-fire-protection-power] (mid-scale rating)
Canberra Plant Selector: filtered result page 11 [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.
Pieris japonica is rated “RECOMENDADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
The leaflet warns that dead, dry parts can produce flames over 2.5 m and advises against planting it directly beside a home or shed.
Mid-scale / conditional (1)
Tree fire-protection classification in Hito to Shinrin (人と森林) — Kyoritsu Shuppan; table reproduced by Kagoshima Prefecture · Hito to Shinrin (1982), Table 10-2; Kagoshima web reproduction · original sourcePrimary evidenceExpert-curatedlineage: independent (root of Japanese municipal fire-protection tree lists)
Table 10-2 prints アセビ in the small fire-protection-power class. The Kagoshima reproduction says highly fire-protective trees can slow spread, promote upward dispersal of heat and smoke, and intercept flying embers.
