Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
The live-shoot barrier study measured sweet viburnum, Viburnum odoratissimum, as moderately flammable with a value of 2. The shoots were green and averaged 18.2 seconds to ignition with a 10.64-centimetre flame length; the material state remains explicit under performance conditions.
The wider pack is mixed. An eastern U.S. source prints “MODERATELY Firewise (2),” while a Japanese table places the whole plant in its large fire-protection-power class. These directional rows yield the page's on-list result in the evidence table, without erasing the measured result's moderate finding.
The record is still marked limited evidence. Revisit the evidence table to see how its directional sources sit together. That label and the linked measurements show both the conclusion and the boundaries of the evidence used for this tree.
Form
tree
Mature height
~25 ft
Rated in
Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil; Global; Japan; eastern US
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil; Global; Japan; eastern US
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.
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.
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.
Conditions in the fire evidence
These describe tested or rated plant material. They are not horticultural maintenance instructions.
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)
Tree fire-protection classification in Hito to Shinrin: サンゴジュ — Table 10-2 [tadaki-kira-1982-fire-protection-power] (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.
Recommends (1)
Tree fire-protection classification in Hito to Shinrin (人と森林) — Kyoritsu Shuppan; table reproduced by Kagoshima Prefecture · Hito to Shinrin (1982), Table 10-2; Kagoshima web reproduction · original sourcePrimary evidenceExpert-curatedlineage: independent (root of Japanese municipal fire-protection tree lists)
Table 10-2 prints サンゴジュ in the large fire-protection-power class. The Kagoshima reproduction says highly fire-protective trees can slow spread, promote upward dispersal of heat and smoke, and intercept flying embers.
20 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Batista2012: Batista, C., Biondi, D., França, A., de Assunção, R., Tres, A., Costa, R., ... Kovalsyki, B. (2012). Evaluación de la Inflamabilidad de Árboles y Arbustos Utilizados en la Implementación de Barreras Verdes en el Sur del Brasil. Cuarto Simposio Internacional Sobre Políticas, Planificación y Economía de los Incendios Forestales: Cambio Climático e Incendios Forestales, Ciudad de México, México.
Shared row context: plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Batista2012-1; sampling ND.
Primary study Batista2020: Batista, A.C., Biondi, D., & Martini, A. (2020). Flammability of ornamental species for fire management in wildland-urban interface in Paraná state. Floresta, 51, 192-200.
Shared row context: plant part leaves; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Batista2020-1; sampling ND.
Primary study Santos2018a: Santos, J. F. L., Batista, A. C., Tres, A., Tetto, A. F., & Kovalsyki, B. (2018a). Flammability and combustibility of potential species for use as fuel breaks. In: D. X. Viegas, Advances in Forest Fire Research 2018 (pp. 788-793), Portugal, University of Coimbra.
Shared row context: plant part twigs; fuel live; predrying no; device epiradiator; site Santos2018a-1; sampling ND.
Primary study Murray2023: Murray, B. R., Hawthorne, T., Curran, T. J., Krix, D. W., Wallace, M. I., Young, K., ... & Webb, J. K. (2023). Shoot flammability patterns among plant species of the wildlandurban interface in the fire-prone Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. International Journal of Wildland Fire, Online early.
Shared row context: plant part branches; fuel all; predrying yes; device grill; site Murray2023-1; sampling ND.
