Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Peach is rated fire resistant, but the evidence supports a cautious yes rather than exceptionally low flammability.
Ohio State University Extension rates peach “L” on its five-band scale, a low-flammability grade that supports recommendation. Virginia Cooperative Extension also gives it an “L,” the favorable grade on its three-band scale. These are expert landscape judgments, and both sources describe peach as short-lived and subject to many insect and disease problems.
The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs rate fruiting peach, along with ornamental double-flowering forms, “Moderately Firewise,” level 2 on a four-level scale. Fire and Emergency New Zealand classifies peach as moderately flammable on its seven-level scale. Its classification is grounded in laboratory testing of shoots, so it reflects the behavior of tested plant material rather than an expert landscape judgment.
Peach receives favorable ratings from two extension services while the other sources place it in moderate categories. Overall, it is rated fire resistant on limited primary evidence, with the clear qualification that it is not consistently assigned the lowest available flammability grade.
Form
tree
Mature height
~15 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
New Zealand; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
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.
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 AL, AR, AZ, CA, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, VI, WI, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
39 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
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
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 prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Prunus persica · 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] (mid-scale 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.
Fruiting peach as well as ornamental doubl3e flowering forms. Many flower colors available.
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
