Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Winter-flowering cherry is generally rated fire resistant, though one eastern Firewise selector places it in its at-risk band.
Four of five assessments favor resistance. Ohio State gives it L, a low flammability rating that its five-band system recommends. Virginia Tech also gives it L on a three-point scale. Michigan State includes Higan cherry among plants considered wildfire-resistant for Michigan. The agencies in Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia list the cherry among relatively fire-resistant plants, emphasizing stronger resistance to wildfire ignition.
At Risk is the second-least favorable of four categories in the USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs’ selector, which places winter-flowering cherry in that band. This is a different measuring stick from the low-flammability grades and affirmative plant lists used by the other sources. The at-risk result does not cancel their agreement, but it keeps the verdict from being unanimous.
This member of the rose family is a tree reaching about 10 feet at maturity, suited to full sun and hardy to USDA zone 5a. Virginia Tech and the three-state list both describe it as not drought tolerant. Taken together, the published judgments support calling winter-flowering cherry fire resistant, with the eastern selector’s caution kept firmly in view.
Form
tree
Mature height
~10 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic +1
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
NJ; partial normalized coverage
New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
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 DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 5–8.
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 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.
5–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Prunus subhirtella · accepted name match.
Source location: Table 1, tree row.
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)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Deciduous Trees [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (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.
Listed as Prunus subhirtella (Weeping/Rosebud Cherry). The source says listed species exhibit stronger resistance to ignition by wildfires. Source comments: Not drought tolerant
