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Leatherleaf arrowwood is not fire resistant; its published assessments consistently place it on the hazardous side.
Ohio State University Extension gives the shrub an H rating, one step below the top of its five-band flammability scale and within the range it advises avoiding. Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Tech also rate it H, the highest of their three bands for how fire-prone a plant is. Both sources describe leatherleaf arrowwood as intolerant of wind and heat, while Ohio State also notes marginal cold hardiness and a vase-shaped habit.
The USDA Forest Service and state Firewise programs reach a similar result through a different system. Leatherleaf arrowwood falls in their “At Risk” category (3), between “Moderately Firewise” (2) and “Not Firewise” (4). That assessment uses the spelling Viburnum rhytidiphyllum and describes large, textured dark-green leaves, clusters of bright-red fall fruit, and leaves that droop as if the plant lacks water. Across all three published assessments, no source places it in a fire-resistant category.
Leatherleaf arrowwood is a Viburnaceae shrub that reaches about 15 feet at maturity. The combined conclusion is highly flammable, so it does not belong near structures or among fire-resistant landscaping choices.
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 DC, DE, IL, KY, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, WV.
Native range
Introduced / established
4 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
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.
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: 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.
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 3 — 10–30 ft from the structure; thin vegetation, remove debris, and minimize plant massing [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (mid-scale rating)
Firewise Landscaping: do not plant within 5 ft of structures (keep out of Zone 1) [OSU B921 source-category siting] (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.
