United States / Grow / swamp chestnut oak

swamp chestnut oak

Quercus michauxii · Fagaceae · all Quercus records · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Quercus michauxii is on-list, with the recommendation documented in the evidence table. The listing remains the leading selected fact for swamp chestnut oak.

The recorded fire condition uses dead material. Its experimental boundary is retained under performance conditions, rather than being generalized to green or irrigated samples.

Two hardiness assertions add the climate context for this oak. Their separate citations remain available under hardiness evidence, apart from both the recommendation and dead-material condition.

Form: tree
Mature height: ~50 ft
Light: Full sun
Water need: moderate
Rated in: Global; NC; North Carolina; eastern US

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: 1 condition stated in cited fire-evidence rows.
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Global; NC; North Carolina; eastern US
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source

Fire-Resistant Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) · Official scoped edition
- NC; complete normalized coverage · 2025-03-26
  The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, MO, MS, NC, NJ, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, MO, MS, NC, NJ, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness: Documented minimum 5a; 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.

Current native

20

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

20 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alabama (AL)
Arkansas (AR)
District of Columbia (DC)
Delaware (DE)
Florida (FL)
Georgia (GA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kentucky (KY)
Louisiana (LA)
Maryland (MD)
Missouri (MO)
Mississippi (MS)
North Carolina (NC)
New Jersey (NJ)
Pennsylvania (PA)
South Carolina (SC)
Tennessee (TN)
Texas (TX)
Virginia (VA)

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record quercus-michauxii · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Quercus michauxii · 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.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record QUMI · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 5a · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -20°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Quercus michauxii · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 70379, Temperature, Minimum (°F).

Conditions in the fire evidence

These describe tested or rated plant material. They are not horticultural maintenance instructions.

dead material: FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database evidence row (condition method), FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database evidence row (condition method), FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database evidence row (condition method), FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database evidence row (condition method), FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database evidence row (condition method)

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] (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 without a rating (5)

Corroboration (5 rows from 1 source)

FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database — Dryad / Global Ecology and Biogeography · Dryad version 9 · original source Corroboration Trait database lineage: meta-aggregator

5 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
- Primary study Varner2021: Varner, J. M., Kane, J. M., Kreye, J. K., & Shearman, T. M. (2021). Litter Flammability of 50 Southeastern North American Tree Species: Evidence for Mesophication Gradients Across Multiple Ecosystems. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 4, 727042. Primary-study method: freshly fallen litter was oven-dried at 50–60°C for at least 24 hours to constant mass; each trial used a 15 g dry litter fuelbed, with five to seven trials per species.
  
  Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Varner2021-1; sampling ND.
  - Shared measurement context: Combustibility measurement.
    - “flame height (cm): 72.3” · condition: dead material · condition method: Materials and Methods, Laboratory Burning
      
      FLAMITS record 13678.
    - “flame intensity (kW/m): 279” · condition: dead material · condition method: Materials and Methods, Laboratory Burning
      
      FLAMITS record 13682.
  - Shared measurement context: Sustainability measurement.
    - “flaming duration (s): 43.7” · condition: dead material · condition method: Materials and Methods, Laboratory Burning
      
      FLAMITS record 13679.
    - “smouldering duration (s): 215.9” · condition: dead material · condition method: Materials and Methods, Laboratory Burning
      
      FLAMITS record 13680.
  - “burnt biomass (%): 91.1” · condition: dead material · condition method: Materials and Methods, Laboratory Burning
    
    FLAMITS record 13681; Consumability measurement.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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Quercus michauxii (Swamp chestnut oak). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/quercus-michauxii/. Last verified 2026-08-23.