FireApproved

United States / Grow / Virginia rose

Virginia rose (Rosa virginiana)
Photo: (c) Jake McCumber, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Virginia rose

Rosa virginiana · Rosaceae · all Rosa records · Wikipedia

View Saved

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.

Virginia rose has a conflict, with the cited rows retaining both evidence directions. The page does not compress that disagreement into a single fire position.

Native and introduced range are both cited. Range evidence keeps the two relations explicit for Rosa virginiana, rather than treating one as a substitute for the other.

The record also carries 2 hardiness assertions in hardiness evidence. Same-form alternatives remain under related plants, so range, hardiness, comparison, and the fire conflict can each be evaluated in its own context. This separation prevents one section from substituting for another.

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

Form
shrub
Mature height
~12 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Maine; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Maine; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic; eastern US
Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources
  • Maine fire-resistant plant list · Official scoped edition
    • ME; partial normalized coverage · 2013-10-23

      Maine Forest Service presents a partial list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. FireApproved publishes only 39 unique exact current/accepted matches plus Rhus typhina from the source's explicit parenthetical; unresolved, abbreviated, misspelled, absent, and duplicate-owner rows remain held.

  • 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.

  • 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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IL, KY, MA, MD, ME, MO, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, TN, VA, VT, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in CT, DC, DE, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, TN, VA, VT.
Introduced / established
2 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5a; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

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

17

exact source areas

Current introduced

2

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

17 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
2 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Mississippi (MS)

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.

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.

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.

Recommends (3)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

  • Maine fire-resistant plant list — Maine Forest Service, Forest Protection Division · MFS-list-updated-2013-10-23 · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: me-mfs-fire-resistant-plants

    “listed as fire-resistant for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure” · original source

    Maine Forest Service includes Virginia rose (Rosa virginiana) on its partial fire-resistant plant list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. The printed scientific name is a unique current-name match to this record.

Avoids (1)

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

American witchhazel
Hamamelis virginiana common winterberry
Ilex verticillata common ninebark
Physocarpus opulifolius New Jersey tea
Ceanothus americanus common buttonbush
Cephalanthus occidentalis American hazelnut
Corylus americana

Fire-resistant shrubs listed above

Same genus in the directory · the Rosa group page

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

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

Rosa virginiana (Virginia rose). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/rosa-virginiana/. Last verified 2026-08-23.