Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Wayfaringtree cannot simply be called fire resistant: Michigan guidance recommends it, while Catalan fire-prevention guidance advises against it.
Michigan State University Extension considers wayfaringtree wildfire resistant and recommends it for Michigan’s climate. Its expert-curated list uses a binary system in which inclusion means recommendation. The Michigan source also places the shrub in USDA hardiness zones 4a through 8b. Within that system, the judgment is favorable.
The Catalan fire-prevention guidance reaches the opposite practical conclusion. The Diputació de Girona and Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya rate Viburnum lantana “desaconsejada,” meaning not recommended. Their five-level garden-suitability method combines fire-resistance literature and fire-service experience with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, and invasiveness. The method assumes that each species receives appropriate care.
Wayfaringtree is a high-water shrub in the Viburnaceae family and reaches about nine feet at maturity. It has been introduced in 20 states, including Colorado, Connecticut, and Iowa.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CO, CT, IA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MT, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, VT, WA, WI, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
20 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.
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 location: PlantCharacteristics record 42977, 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.
Guía de pirojardinería: not suitable inside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (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.
Viburnum lantana is rated “DESACONSEJADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
