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Water oak is fire resistant: practical guidance consistently places it among low-flammability or Firewise trees.
Across five recommendations, the agreement is unusually clear. The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs give water oak Firewise 1, the best band on their four-point scale. North Carolina’s cooperative extension rated it low flammability in 2005, and NC State’s current guidance and Plant Toolbox retain that rating. Virginia Cooperative Extension likewise assigns it L, the recommended end of its three-point scale, while noting that the tree tolerates wet soils. Together, these findings support the fire-resistant classification.
A 2004 laboratory study adds detail without issuing an overall rating. The researchers rejected a single composite flammability index, instead comparing plants through measures of moisture, volatile solids, and energy alongside aboveground structure, foliage, litter, and stems. Its measurements therefore describe water oak’s fire-related traits rather than contradicting the extension recommendations.
Water oak is a roughly 40-foot tree at maturity, suited to full sun and high water, and native across broad parts of the eastern and south-central United States. Fire resistant does not mean unable to burn, but the guidance consistently favors water oak as a lower-flammability landscape choice.
Form
tree
Mature height
~40 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
high
Rated in
Global; NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US +3
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
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, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, KY, LA, MD, MO, MS, NC, NJ, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, DE, FL, GA, KY, LA, MD, MO, MS, NC, NJ, OK, 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.
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 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Quercus nigra · 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.
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 nigra · source identifier match.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 70401, 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 3 — 10–30 ft from the structure; thin vegetation, remove debris, and minimize plant massing [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (with its recommendation)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: quercus-nigra [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (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.
11 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Kane2008: Kane, J. M., Varner, J. M., & Hiers, J. K. (2008). The burning characteristics of southeastern oaks: Discriminating fire facilitators from fire impeders. Forest Ecology and Management, 256, 2039-2045.
Shared row context: fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Kane2008-1; sampling november and december.
“flame height (cm): 57.3”
FLAMITS record 5452; Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves.
“flaming duration (s): 77.1”
FLAMITS record 5460; Sustainability measurement; plant part leaves.
“smouldering duration (s): 268.8”
FLAMITS record 5468; Sustainability measurement; plant part litter.
“mass loss rate (g/s): 0.34”
FLAMITS record 5476; Combustibility measurement; plant part litter.
“burnt biomass (%): 77.9”
FLAMITS record 5484; Consumability measurement; plant part litter.
Primary study Mola2014: Mola, J. M., Varner, J. M., Jules, E. S., & Spector, T. (2014). Altered Community Flammability in Florida's Apalachicola Ravines and Implications for the Persistence of the Endangered Conifer Torreya taxifolia. Plos One, 9, 8.
Shared row context: plant part litter; fuel all; predrying no; device burning bench; site Mola2014-1; sampling may and june.
“flame height (cm): 4.35”
FLAMITS record 9231; Combustibility measurement.
“flaming duration (s): 77.1”
FLAMITS record 9248; Sustainability measurement.
“burnt biomass (%): 99.22”
FLAMITS record 9265; Consumability measurement.
“time to smouldering (s): 268.8”
FLAMITS record 9282; Ignitability measurement.
Primary study Safdari2018: Safdari, M.-S., Rahmati, M., Amini, E., Howarth, J. E., Berryhill, J. P., Dietenberger, M., Fletcher, T. H. (2018). Characterization of pyrolysis products from fast pyrolysis of live and dead vegetation native to the Southern United States. Fuel, 229, 151166.
Shared row context: Combustibility measurement; plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device flat flame burner; site Safdari2018-1; sampling ND.
