Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Burkwood’s viburnum is consistently rated fire resistant across four expert and government sources.
Ohio State University Extension gives the shrub an L on its five-band flammability scale, placing it on the recommended side, though one band sits below it. Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Tech also give it an L, which their three-point scale maps to a recommendation. Ohio State describes the plant as tolerant of heat, cold, urban conditions, and pests; Virginia describes tolerance of heat, cold, and urban conditions.
The other findings use different forms of guidance but reach the same practical result. Michigan State University Extension includes Burkwood’s viburnum among plants considered wildfire-resistant and recommended for Michigan’s climate. The Australian Capital Territory government’s selector marks it “Fire Retardant: Yes.”
Those sources do not all measure or describe fire performance in the same way. Two assign flammability grades, one provides a wildfire-resistant planting list, and one applies a fire-retardant selector attribute. Even with those differences, every finding favors this Viburnaceae shrub. For a homeowner choosing on the basis of the published guidance, Burkwood’s viburnum belongs among the fire-resistant options.
Form
shrub
Rated in
Australian Capital Territory, Australia; Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest; Virginia / Mid-Atlantic
Uses
screen, specimen
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
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 OH.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 5–8.
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.
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.
5–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Viburnum xburkwoodii · accepted name match.
Source location: Table 1, shrub row.
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.
Canberra Plant Selector: filtered result page 21 [canberra-selector] (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.
