Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, cherry plum is rated fire resistant, though the strength and basis of that judgment vary among sources.
Ohio State and Virginia Tech both give it low flammability ratings on their extension scales. FireSmart BC approves it as fire resistant, while also flagging it for more research. Nevada’s extension service includes it because at least two cited western sources rated it favorably. A Catalonian guide calls the species recommended, assuming species-specific care and weighing fire research, fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and fire-service experience.
The least enthusiastic finding is still favorable: the USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs rate cherry plum “Moderately Firewise,” the second category on a four-point scale. Taken together, the six assessments support a fire-resistant verdict, but they do not all make the same claim. Some are expert judgments, some compile earlier plant lists, and one uses a broader garden-suitability method rather than flammability alone.
Cherry plum is a roughly 15-foot tree in the rose family, grown in full sun and hardy to USDA zone 5a. It has also been flagged as invasive in one jurisdiction, so fire resistance is not the only consideration when deciding whether it belongs in a particular landscape.
Form
tree
Mature height
~15 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
British Columbia; Catalonia, Spain; Global; Nevada / Great Basin +3
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
University of Nevada Cooperative Extension compiled plants suited to Nevada climate zones and reported favorably by at least two upstream firewise lists. FireApproved publishes 126 exact source owners at Nevada publication scope. The source explicitly makes no independent flammability determination, so these rows remain corroborative.
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 CA, DC, DE, GA, ID, MA, MD, MI, MT, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, TN, UT, WA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 5–8.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
1 ecological invasive report.
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 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.
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] (mid-scale rating)
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.
Prunus cerasifera 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.
7 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Salvo2015: Salvo-Aires, F. (2015). Effects of woody weeds on fuels and fire behaviour in Eastern Australian forests and woodlands. PhD. Dissertation. University of Sydney.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Salvo2015-1; sampling ND.
