nannyberry

Viburnum lentago · Viburnaceae · all Viburnum records · also called Arrowwood viburnum · Wikipedia

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.

Viburnum lentago has native and introduced occurrence documented under range evidence. The two distribution roles retain separate provenance within the nannyberry record. This keeps the distribution evidence distinct from later climate citations.

The species is on-list, with its recommendation source preserved in the evidence table. That listing remains independent of the range split, and the source roles stay separate in the record.

The three hardiness assertions add the selected climate context. Their individual citations are available under hardiness evidence, apart from both the recommendation and the native-versus-introduced distribution material for this species.

Form: shrub
Mature height: ~12 ft
Water need: moderate
Rated in: Alaska; Maine; Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest +2

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Alaska; Maine; Michigan / Great Lakes; Ohio / Midwest; Wisconsin / western Great Lakes; eastern US
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 5 scopes across 5 cited fire sources

Protect Your Home from Wildfire — Fire Resistant Vegetation and Landscaping · Official scoped edition
- AK; partial normalized coverage · 2005-04-27
  Alaska Division of Forestry opens with the wildfire threat to Alaskans and publishes Alaska firewise-landscape examples. FireApproved publishes 58 exact source owners from its 60 taxon entries and holds the taxon-free fern label. State publication scope does not establish suitability for every Alaska climate, site, or home-ignition-zone placement.
Maine fire-resistant plant list · Official scoped edition
- ME; partial normalized coverage · 2013-10-23
  Maine Forest Service presents a partial list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. FireApproved publishes only 39 unique exact current/accepted matches plus Rhus typhina from the source's explicit parenthetical; unresolved, abbreviated, misspelled, absent, and duplicate-owner rows remain held.
Wildfire-resistant Landscape Plants for Michigan (Extension Bulletin E2948) · Official scoped edition
- MI; partial normalized coverage · 2007-01-01
  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.
Firewise Landscaping (OSU Extension Bulletin 921) · Official scoped edition
- OH; partial normalized coverage · 2006-03-01
  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.
Firewise Landscaping — A Guide to Protecting Your Home from Wildfire · Official scoped edition
- WI; partial normalized coverage · 2009-02-01
  Wisconsin DNR and UW-Extension co-published this Wisconsin guide, which the current DNR property-preparation page still links. FireApproved publishes 21 exact owners from the profiles and shoreland table. The co-publication is one lineage and does not establish site suitability.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AL, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SD, VA, VT, WI, WV, WY.
Native range: Current cited native range in CT, GA, IA, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SD, VA, VT, WI, WV, WY.
Introduced / established: 1 sourced range or established record. 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.

Current native

26

exact source areas

Current introduced

1

exact source area

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

26 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Connecticut (CT)
Georgia (GA)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Maine (ME)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Montana (MT)
North Dakota (ND)
Nebraska (NE)
New Hampshire (NH)
New Jersey (NJ)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Rhode I. (RI)
South Dakota (SD)
Virginia (VA)
Vermont (VT)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)
Wyoming (WY)

1 introduced source area · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Colorado (CO)

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record viburnum-lentago · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Viburnum lentago · 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.
Wildfire-resistant Landscape Plants for Michigan (Extension Bulletin E2948) · record shrub:Viburnum lentago · New, January 2007 · as of 2026-08-26

3–7 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Viburnum lentago · exact match.

Source location: Table 1, shrub row.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record VILE · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -33°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Viburnum lentago · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 42983, 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 2 — 5–10 ft from the structure; maintained lawn or fuel breaks, with easily ignited evergreens avoided [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Protect Your Home from Wildfire: Shrubs [Alaska DNR brochure sections] (with its recommendation)
Maine fire-resistant plant list: Shrubs, page 2: Nannyberry - Viburnum lentago [Maine Forest Service list section and page] (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.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“AT RISK Firewise (3)”

Flowers smell like a "billy goat".

Guides that discuss this plant

What UWEX and the DNR agreed on

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

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

Viburnum lentago (Arrowwood viburnum). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/viburnum-lentago/. Last verified 2026-08-23.