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No.
Carolina hemlock is not fire resistant: three U.S. programs advise against it, while New Zealand testing rates it moderately flammable.
The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs give Carolina hemlock a 4, “Not Firewise,” the least favorable result on their four-point scale. Ohio State University Extension assigns it H on a five-band flammability scale, one step below the highest band and within the grades its authors say to avoid. Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Tech also give it H, the highest of their three grades. Their assessment adds that Carolina hemlock will not tolerate drought and requires good drainage.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand provides a different kind of result. Its classification is grounded in laboratory testing of shoot flammability, and Carolina hemlock lands in the middle “Moderate” band of a seven-level scale. That result is less severe than the American guidance, but it does not amount to a fire-resistant rating.
Taken together, the findings support treating Carolina hemlock as highly flammable and keeping it away from structures. This Southeastern U.S. native grows to about 50 feet at maturity and needs moderate water. For a homeowner deciding where to grow it, the moderate laboratory result is its best showing, while every expert-curated U.S. assessment advises against relying on it as a fire-resistant tree.
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 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 DC, DE, GA, MD, NC, NJ, OH, PA, SC, TN, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in GA, NC, SC, TN, VA.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7a; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
Broader regional context
Federal context
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.
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.
Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Tsuga caroliniana · 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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 15605, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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 avoid rating)
Firewise Landscaping: keep 30 ft from the home (Zone 3) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (with its avoid rating)
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.
Dark green flat needle with two white strips on underside. Needles encircle the branches rather in a single plane as with Canadian hemlock. Found scattered in southern most range of with Canadian hemlock -hemlock adelgid destroying natural stands in region.
Will not tolerate drought, requires good drainage.
Mid-scale / conditional (1)
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
