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Pacific rhododendron

Rhododendron · Ericaceae · all Rhododendron 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: Florida; Japan; Marin County, California; Nevada / Great Basin; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest; South Carolina; Tasmania, Australia; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; Yavapai County, Arizona; southeastern US; western WA
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 8 scopes across 8 cited fire sources

Fire-Resistant Plants Common to Marin County · Official scoped edition
- Marin County (CA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2019-01-01
  The publication is explicitly limited to plants common to Marin County. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as Marin regional context while retaining its placement, spacing, irrigation, and maintenance boundary. It is not statewide California guidance or parcel suitability.
Firewise Plants for the Puget Sound Basin · Official scoped edition
- Puget Sound Basin (WA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-01-01
  King County's current wildfire page links this list for the Puget Sound Basin. FireApproved publishes 82 exact source owners as basin context, not statewide Washington guidance or a site-specific recommendation.
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.
Landscaping Can Be Attractive & FIREWISE (Fire Smart Plant List for SC) · Official scoped edition
- SC; partial normalized coverage
  South Carolina Forestry Commission publishes this explicitly as its Fire Smart Plant List for South Carolina. FireApproved publishes 63 exact genus owners from 72 unique common-name labels; unsafe common-name mappings and duplicates are not broadened. The brochure calls the list non-inclusive and does not establish species-level or site-specific suitability.
A Compilation of Good Plant Choices for Nevada's High Fire Hazard Areas (SP-05-16) · Official scoped edition
- NV; partial normalized coverage · 2005-01-01
  University of Nevada Cooperative Extension compiled plants suited to Nevada climate zones and reported favorably by at least two upstream firewise lists. FireApproved publishes 126 exact source owners at Nevada publication scope. The source explicitly makes no independent flammability determination, so these rows remain corroborative.
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 and Fire-Prone Plants Common to Yavapai County (Bulletin 34) · Official scoped edition
- Yavapai County (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2025-03-14
  University of Arizona Cooperative Extension authors Bulletin 34 for Yavapai County. FireApproved publishes 198 exact source owners from its resistant and prone tables and keeps the county boundary visible. County publication scope is regional Arizona context, never statewide scope.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: Documented range 6–9.

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.

Pacific rhododendron (Rhododendron) — Photo: (c) Tatyana Petrenko, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: shrub
USDA hardiness: 6–9
Grows in: ID, OR, WA
Rated in: Florida; Japan; Marin County, California; Nevada / Great Basin +8
Family: Ericaceae
Evidence: 12 cited sources

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.

Fire-Resistant Plants for Home Landscapes (PNW 590) · 2023-10 · as of 2026-08-26

6–9 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Rhododendron · exact match.

Source location: Plant profile USDA hardiness zones field.

Conditions in the fire evidence

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

green: Landscaping in Florida with Fire in Mind evidence row
irrigated: Fire-Resistant Plants Common to Marin County 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.

Firewise Landscaping: do not plant within 5 ft of structures (keep out of Zone 1) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (with its avoid rating)
Fire Resisting Garden Plants for the Urban Fringe and Rur…: should be avoided in the Building Protection Zone [Texas Building Protection Zone] (mid-scale rating)
Landscaping in Florida with Fire in Mind: inside defensible space [ufifas-for71-defensible-space] (with its recommendation)
Tree fire-protection classification in Hito to Shinrin: ツヅジ類 — Table 10-2 [tadaki-kira-1982-fire-protection-power] (mid-scale rating)
Landscaping Can Be Attractive & FIREWISE: SHRUBS [SCFC Fire Smart plant-form sections] (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.

Avoids (2)

Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) — Ohio State University Extension (Sydnor, Steward, Kloss / Ohio DNR Division of Forestry) · 2006 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Requires acid, moist, well-drained soils; disease sensitive.
Virginia Firescapes — Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes (430-300) — Virginia Cooperative Extension / Virginia Tech (Appleton, Frenzel, Hillegass, Lyons, Steward — Virginia Firewise Landscaping Task Force) · 2009 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“H flammability”

Requires well drained acid soil.

Mid-scale / conditional (4)

Quantifying and ranking the flammability of ornamental shrubs in the southern United States — USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station + NIST (Long, Behm, Zipperer, Hermansen, Maranghides, Mell) · 2006 · original source Primary evidence Lab-tested lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“Moderate flammability (whole-plant burns, NIST BFRL)”
Fire Resisting Garden Plants for the Urban Fringe and Rural Areas — Tasmania Fire Service (Chladil & Sheridan; photographs Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens) · 2017 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: utas-tree

“Moderate Flammability”
A Compilation of Good Plant Choices for Nevada's High Fire Hazard Areas (SP-05-16) — University of Nevada Cooperative Extension · SP-05-16 (2005) · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: unr-tree

“listed by at least two sources; reviewers recorded disagreement”

Compilation marks: UCFPL 1997, UI Bulletin 67, OSU FRN 6.
Tree fire-protection classification in Hito to Shinrin (人と森林) — Kyoritsu Shuppan; table reproduced by Kagoshima Prefecture · Hito to Shinrin (1982), Table 10-2; Kagoshima web reproduction · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: independent (root of Japanese municipal fire-protection tree lists)

“中” · score 2 (tadaki-kira-fire-protection-power-0-3)

Table 10-2 prints ツヅジ類 in the medium fire-protection-power class. The Kagoshima reproduction says highly fire-protective trees can slow spread, promote upward dispersal of heat and smoke, and intercept flying embers.

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

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

Rhododendron (Pacific rhododendron). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/rhododendron/. Last verified 2026-08-23.