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United States / Grow / Blue Ridge blueberry

Blue Ridge blueberry (Vaccinium pallidum)
Photo: (c) Tom Scavo, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Blue Ridge blueberry

Vaccinium pallidum · Ericaceae · all Vaccinium records · also called Lowbush blueberry · 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.

Yes, Blue Ridge blueberry is rated fire resistant.

All four findings favor it. Oregon State University’s extension service calls it Lowbush Blueberry and recommends it for Willamette Valley growing conditions.

The agreement matters because the sources use different systems. NC State’s 2005 joint assessment places Vaccinium pallidum in the Low band of a four-level scale running from Low to Extreme, with Low treated as a recommendation. Its 2025 successor again assigns low flammability on a three-level scale, and the current Plant Toolbox repeats the low tag. The Toolbox finding is corroboration rather than the sole basis for a verdict because it does not document who assigned its flammability values. Oregon uses a simpler approach: inclusion among its fire-resistant plant profiles is the recommendation.

Blue Ridge blueberry is a shrub in the Ericaceae family, native across the southeastern, northeastern, and north-central United States. The North Carolina findings therefore address part of its native range, while Oregon’s conclusion is expressly tied to Willamette Valley growing conditions. Together, these findings provide consistent support for treating Blue Ridge blueberry as a fire-resistant landscape choice.

Form
shrub
Rated in
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Oregon (Willamette Valley)
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Oregon (Willamette Valley)
Typed publication scope: 2 scopes across 2 cited fire sources
  • Fire-Resistant Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) · Official scoped edition
    • NC; complete normalized coverage · 2025-03-26

      The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.

  • Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley (EM 9103) · Official scoped edition
    • Willamette Valley (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-02-01

      OSU Extension says EM 9103 highlights fire-resistant plants that thrive under Willamette Valley growing conditions. FireApproved publishes 172 exact owners only as valley context. The guide shares the PNW 590 lineage and is not a second independent vote or statewide site clearance.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 3–8.

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

30

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

30 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • 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 (4)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
Same genus in the directory · the Vaccinium group page

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

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

Vaccinium pallidum (Lowbush blueberry). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/vaccinium-pallidum/. Last verified 2026-08-23.