Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
No, Bunge's pine is not fire resistant; published guidance classifies it as highly flammable and advises keeping it away from structures.
Two landscape assessments point the same way. The Forest Service and state Firewise programs rated it “Not Firewise,” category 4 on a four-step scale running from Firewise to Not Firewise. Their description notes its exfoliating bark in green, gray, brown, and silver. Ohio State University Extension gave it an H for high flammability on its five-band scale, where H and VH are both ratings to avoid. The Ohio assessment also describes the tree as prone to storm damage, resistant to disease, and tolerant of urban conditions. Those useful traits do not change its fire rating.
A laboratory measurement adds detail without acting as a landscape recommendation. In the 2023 study stored by the FLAMITS database, predried live wood reached flaming in 206 seconds in a calorimeter. That number measures ignition time for a specified plant part, fuel condition, and device. FLAMITS preserves measurements from varied experiments but does not impose one threshold across those different methods, so 206 seconds should not be treated as a stand-alone safe-or-unsafe cutoff.
Bunge's pine is a roughly 30-foot tree in the pine family, suited to full sun and hardy to USDA zone 5a. For placement near a home, the practical conclusion comes from the two landscape ratings: both put the species on the avoid side, and neither offers a fire-resistant reading.
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.
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 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Pinus bungeana · 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)
Firewise Landscaping: keep 30 ft from the home (Zone 3) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (with its avoid rating)
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.
36 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Yang2023: Yang, W., Bakar, B. A., Mamat, H., Gong, L., & Nursyamsi, N. (2023). A Laboratory-Scale Study of Selected Chinese Typical Flammable Wildland Timbers Ignition Formation Mechanism. Fire, 6, 20
Shared row context: plant part wood; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Yang2023-6; sampling ND.
