Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
The historical Eastern U.S.
selector rates Podocarpus macrophyllus NOT Firewise, despite salt tolerance and medium drought resistance.
The selector row describes an upright, multistemmed tree reaching 15 feet, with ladder potential marked Yes without pruning. It specifies full sun and adaptable soil pH, but low tolerance of poorly drained soils. Those growing requirements do not reverse its fire grade.
The apparent contradiction is its Landscape Zone 2 assignment. For high-fire-risk sites, LZ2 covers 5 to 10 feet from a structure; the same selector separately calls for removing highly flammable vegetation within at least 30 feet of all structures. Its LZ2 label therefore cannot authorize planting this tree close to a house.
The zone's tree rules require at least 10 feet of mature clearance both vertically and horizontally from the house, plus 10 to 15 feet between crown edges. The general minimum of 2 feet at full growth does not lower those tree clearances or the removal distance. LZ2 also specifies a maintained lawn, avoiding easily ignited evergreens, and fuel breaks such as rock gardens or paths.
Ongoing care means clearing dead leaves, twigs and needles; cutting out dead, diseased and low branches; and preventing deadwood through watering and pruning. Keep plants separated in both directions and avoid mass plantings.
The historical row's invasive No is source-specific. Separate U.S. register records report invasive status in Hawaii and the contiguous United States; neither is a current legal planting determination.
4 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7b; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
2 ecological invasive reports.
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: 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 15623, 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.
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)
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.
2 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Zhang2022: Zhang, S., Cornwell, W. K., Zhao, W., van Logtestijn, R. S., Krab, E. J., Aerts, R., & Cornelissen, J. H. (2022). Experimental evidence that leaf litter decomposability and flammability are decoupled across gymnosperm species. Journal of Ecology, 111, 761-772.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Zhang2022-1; sampling january and march 2011.
