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United States / Grow / American bladdernut

American bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia)
Photo: (c) Tom Norton, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

American bladdernut

Staphylea trifolia · Staphyleaceae · also called Bladdernut · Wikipedia

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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.

Form
shrub
Mature height
~8 ft
Light
Full sun
Rated in
Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; 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
Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; eastern US
Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 1 cited fire source
  • 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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, FL, GA, IL, KY, LA, MD, MN, MS, NC, NE, NJ, NY, OK, PA, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

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

22

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

22 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • 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.

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 (1)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

  • Firewise Landscaping Plants (Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia editions) — Maryland DNR, New Jersey DEP, and West Virginia Division of Forestry · 2015 archived PDF · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: md-nj-wv-template-family

    “relatively resistant to fire”

    Listed as Staphylea trifolia (American Bladdernut). The source says listed species exhibit stronger resistance to ignition by wildfires. Source comments: Shade tolerant; urban adaptive

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Fire-resistant shrubs instead

New Jersey tea
Ceanothus americanus common buttonbush
Cephalanthus occidentalis American black elderberry
Sambucus canadensis Carolina rose
Rosa carolina American hazelnut
Corylus americana fragrant sumac
Rhus aromatica

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

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Staphylea trifolia (Bladdernut). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/staphylea-trifolia/. Last verified 2026-08-23.