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Japanese tree lilac

Syringa reticulata · Oleaceae · all Syringa 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: No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Alaska; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); eastern US
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources

Protect Your Home from Wildfire — Fire Resistant Vegetation and Landscaping · Official scoped edition
- AK; partial normalized coverage · 2005-04-27
  Alaska Division of Forestry opens with the wildfire threat to Alaskans and publishes Alaska firewise-landscape examples. FireApproved publishes 58 exact source owners from its 60 taxon entries and holds the taxon-free fern label. State publication scope does not establish suitability for every Alaska climate, site, or home-ignition-zone placement.
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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in ID, MA, NH, NY, OR, VT, WA, WY.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: 3 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: Documented range 4–7.

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.

Japanese tree lilac (Syringa reticulata) — Photo: (c) Jeff Hansen, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: tree
USDA hardiness: 4–7
Grows in: ID, MA, NH, NY, OR, VT, WA, WY
Rated in: Alaska; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho) +1
Family: Oleaceae
Evidence: 5 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

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

2

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

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

New York (NY)
Vermont (VT)

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 syringa-reticulata · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

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

Source taxon: Syringa reticulata · 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:Japanese tree lilac · 2023-10 · as of 2026-08-26

4–7 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Syringa reticulata · exact match.

Source location: Japanese tree lilac profile, USDA hardiness zones field.

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: LZ2; LZ3 [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-resistant plant profile galleries: Japanese tree lilac — Syringa reticulata [osu-2023-trees-gallery] (with its recommendation)
Protect Your Home from Wildfire: Trees [Alaska DNR brochure 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.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“Syringa pekinensis: AT RISK Firewise (3); Syringa reticulata: Firewise (1)”

Syringa pekinensis: Pink to purple flower clusters without scent. | Syringa reticulata: Cherry-like bark. Large showy creamy white flower clusters. Can be very odoriferous.

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

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

Syringa reticulata (Japanese tree lilac). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/syringa-reticulata/. Last verified 2026-08-23.