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Sugar pine is rated fire resistant overall, but Oregon and Lake Tahoe guidance reach opposite conclusions about its hazard.
Oregon State University’s extension service lists sugar pine among fire-resistant evergreen trees for Central and Southern Oregon, while advising that most listed plants need summer irrigation and healthy maintenance. The Nevada Division of Forestry and University of Nevada Cooperative Extension instead rate sugar pine a high fire hazard in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Their rating is a rough estimate drawn from varied sources, not from scientific trials.
Sugar pine litter sampled in summer and not dried before testing took 2.1 seconds to produce flames on a burning bench. This measures ignition in one experimental setting, not the fire behavior of a living tree. The database sets no single threshold for turning measurements from different plant parts, devices, and flammability variables into resistant or hazardous ratings.
Sugar pine is a moderately watered tree in the pine family and reaches about 229 feet at maturity. Its overall fire-resistant classification rests on limited primary evidence, so the regional context matters.
Form
tree
Mature height
~229 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Global; Lake Tahoe Basin, Nevada and California; Oregon
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Nevada Division of Forestry and University of Nevada Cooperative Extension publish Bulletin 06-01 for the Lake Tahoe Basin and vicinity. FireApproved publishes 83 exact rated owners as basin context across Nevada and California. Rough estimates are not statewide or site ratings.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CA, NV, OR.
Native range
Current cited native range in CA, NV, OR.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4a; 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.
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.
Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes: Central and Southern Oregon [osu-frn6-oregon-regions] (with its recommendation)
Home Landscaping Guide for Lake Tahoe and Vicinity: Fire Hazard column: high [tahoe-guide-2006] (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.
“Fire-Resistant Plant Materials for Oregon”
· condition: green
Pinus lambertiana (Sugar pine) is listed under “Trees—evergreens” for Central and Southern Oregon. The guide says most listed plants require some irrigation during Oregon's dry summer months and must be maintained in a healthy condition.
Table 1's Fire Hazard column prints “high” for this taxon. The guide calls the rating a rough estimate of potential flammability, not a result of scientific trials. Its footnote says plants that turn brown often become high fire hazards and tells readers to mow grasses and forbs when they begin to turn brown.
Listed without a rating (72)Corroboration (72 rows from 1 source)
72 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study deMagalhaes2012: De Magalhães, R. M. Q., & Schwilk, D. W. (2012). Leaf traits and litter flammability: evidence for non-additive mixture effects in a temperate forest. Journal of Ecology, 100, 1153-1163.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying no; device burning bench; site deMagalhaes2012-1; sampling summer.
Primary study Gabrielson2012: Gabrielson, A. T., Larson, A. J., Lutz, J. A., & Reardon, J. J. (2012). Biomass and burning characteristics of sugar pine cones. Fire Ecology, 8, 58-70.
Shared row context: plant part cones; fuel dead; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Gabrielson2012-1; sampling ND.
Primary study vanWagtendonk1998: Van Wagdendonk, J., Sydoriak, W. M., & Benedict, J. M. (1998). Heat content variation of Sierra Nevada conifers. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 8, 147-158.
Primary study Varner2022: Varner, J. M., Shearman, T. M., Kane, J. M., Banwell, E., Jules, E., & Stambaugh, M. (2022). Understanding flammability and bark thickness in the genus Pinus using a phylogenetic approach. Scientific Reports, 12, 7384.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Varner2022-15; sampling ND.
Primary study deMagalhaes2017: de Magalhães, R. (2017). The effect of leaf traits on litter flammability in mixed-conifer forest. PhD. Dissertation. Texas Tech University.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying no; device burning bench; site deMagalhaes2017-1; sampling ND.