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Pin oak

Quercus palustris · Fagaceae · all Quercus records

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: 2 conditions stated in cited fire-evidence rows.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 5 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: British Columbia; Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest; Oregon; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US; eastern WA
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 7 scopes across 5 cited fire sources

Firewise Landscaping Plants (Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia editions) · Official scoped edition
- MD; partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-08
  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.
Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) · Official scoped edition
- OH; partial normalized coverage · 2006-03-01
  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.
Fire-Resistant Plants for Home Landscapes (PNW 590) · Official scoped edition
- ID, OR, WA; partial normalized coverage · 2023-10-01
  The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) · Official scoped edition
- VA; partial normalized coverage · 2009-04-15
  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.
Fire-Resistant Plants for Eastern Washington · Official scoped edition
- Eastern Washington (WA footprint); partial normalized coverage
  Washington DNR publishes the guide for Eastern Washington and says it compiles plants from other Firewise documents that are likely to thrive there. FireApproved publishes 46 exact owners only as eastern Washington context. The rows are corroborative, not empirical or statewide.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, NC, NE, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, TN, VA, WA, WI, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, MI, MO, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: 2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status: Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status: Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here: No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
Broader regional context: Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context: Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.

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.

Pin oak (Quercus palustris) — Photo: (c) Andre Hosper, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: tree
USDA hardiness: Applicable source statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each source
Mature height: ~100 ft
Water need: high
Current cited native range: AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, MI, MO, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV
Grows in: AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, ID, IL +23
Rated in: British Columbia; Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia +7
Family: Fagaceae
Evidence: 11 cited sources

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

26

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

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

Alabama (AL)
Arkansas (AR)
Connecticut (CT)
District of Columbia (DC)
Delaware (DE)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Michigan (MI)
Missouri (MO)
North Carolina (NC)
New Jersey (NJ)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Rhode I. (RI)
Tennessee (TN)
Virginia (VA)
Vermont (VT)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)

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-palustris · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 4 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Quercus palustris · 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.
Fire-Resistant Plants for Home Landscapes (PNW 590) · record trees:Pin oak · 2023-10 · as of 2026-08-26

4–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Quercus palustris · exact match.

Source location: Pin oak profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record QUPA2 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -33°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Quercus palustris · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 70412, Temperature, Minimum (°F).

Conditions in the fire evidence

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

green: Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes evidence row
irrigated: Shoot flammability patterns in native and exotic street tree species at the WUI of eastern Australia evidence 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] (with its recommendation)
Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes: Oregon [osu-frn6-oregon-regions] (with its recommendation)
Time to extinguish the exotic flame: Lessons from the 202…: Urban zone; Table 1 and deposited raw workbook [macalister-2025-leaf-flammability] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-resistant plant profile galleries: Pin oak — Quercus palustris [osu-2023-trees-gallery] (with its recommendation)
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.

Mid-scale / conditional (2)

Shoot flammability patterns in native and exotic street tree species at the WUI of eastern Australia — Fire (Huber-Smith, Morley, Krix, Murray et al.; University of Technology Sydney) · 2023 · original source Primary evidence Lab-tested lineage: uts-murray-tree

“Measured; four flammability-attribute rankings were not concordant” · condition: irrigated

Shoot time-to-flame, flame duration, flaming events, and flame temperature were compared without an overall class.
Time to extinguish the exotic flame: Lessons from the 2021 Cape Town fire — South African Journal of Botany / University of Cape Town · South African Journal of Botany 184:1163-1173 · original source Primary evidence Lab-tested lineage: independent (UCT post-Table-Mountain-fire study)

“Didn't burn”

Official-workbook means across 50 leaf trials: fresh ignition 1.666 s, fresh sustainability 12.797 s, dry ignition 1.161 s, dry sustainability 12.795 s, and combustibility 21.536 mg DW s-1. Published Table 1 observation for the 2021 fire: Didn't burn.

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

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · ITIS

Quercus palustris (Pin oak). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/quercus-palustris/. Last verified 2026-08-23.