Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, Chinese elm is rated fire resistant, though the guidance is stronger than the laboratory case.
Four public sources favor it. The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs gave Chinese elm the most favorable point on their four-level Firewise scale. Ohio State University Extension rated it low on a five-point flammability scale, while Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Tech gave it the low rating on their three-point scale. The University of Tennessee Extension also included it among its Firewise plants.
Laboratory findings are less conclusive. A 2023 study compared shoots by time to flame, flame duration, number of flaming events, and flame temperature, but the rankings did not agree and the authors did not give Chinese elm an overall low-flammability classification. A separate database reports that live, unpredried Chinese elm wood took 191.5 seconds to begin flaming on a burning bench. That number describes one plant part under one experimental setup, not the fire performance of a complete landscape tree.
Chinese elm is therefore a reasonable fire-resistant choice based on several regional expert guides, but it should not be treated as fireproof. The favorable verdict rests mainly on professional plant-selection guidance, while the available measurements do not yet supply a clear laboratory confirmation.
Form
tree
Mature height
~45 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia; Global; Ohio / Midwest; Tennessee +2
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
University of Tennessee Extension SP685 is Tennessee landscape guidance and publishes 78 represented plant owners. Most table rows are a carrier of Virginia Firescapes rather than an independent rating; Tennessee source scope does not change that lineage or establish site suitability.
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 AR, AZ, CA, CO, DC, DE, FL, GA, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, NC, NJ, NV, OH, OK, PA, VA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
11 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; 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: Ulmus parvifolia · 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.
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 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.
6 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Lizhong2007: Lizhong, Y., Zaifu, G., Yupeng, Z., & Weicheng, F. (2007). The influence of different external heating ways on pyrolysis and spontaneous ignition of some woods. Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, 78, 4045.
Shared row context: plant part wood; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Lizhong2007-1; sampling ND.
