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United States / Grow / American wisteria

American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens)
Photo: (c) Lauren McLaurin, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

American wisteria

Wisteria frutescens · Fabaceae · all Wisteria records · Wikipedia

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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.

Wisteria frutescens carries an avoid recommendation in the evidence table. The cited conclusion leads this American wisteria record and keeps its species-level scope.

The source coverage remains limited evidence, with the accepted extent visible in the supporting rows. Same-form alternatives under related plants do not inherit the avoid designation or source depth.

Two hardiness assertions have their own citations in hardiness evidence. Their climate role remains independent of both the recommendation and the comparison set. This separation keeps each climate assertion checkable without enlarging the fire-source pack for this species.

Fire-resistant vines instead

Form
vine
Mature height
~40 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Austin, Texas; eastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Highly flammable — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Austin, Texas; eastern US
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Firewise Landscaping (Travis County) · Official scoped edition
    • Travis County, Austin area (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2024-01-16

      Texas A&M AgriLife Extension publishes this page through its Travis County horticulture program. FireApproved publishes 56 exact owners and retains the source's zone and warning conditions. This is county/Austin regional context, not a second statewide Texas table or site clearance.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 6b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

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

28

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

28 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • West Virginia (WV)

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.

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.

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.

Avoids (2)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

  • Firewise Landscaping (Travis County) — Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Travis County · page modified 2024-01-16 · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: unknown

    “Plants to Avoid for Zone 1 (within 30′ of Structure)”

    Listed as Wisteria, Texas — Wisteria frutescens. The page says Zone 1 entries should be restricted to zones 2 or 3; all-zone entries are highly flammable due to volatile oils or growth habit.

Fire-resistant vines instead

trumpet creeper
Campsis radicans Virginia creeper
Parthenocissus quinquifolia trumpet honeysuckle
Lonicera sempervirens common hop
Humulus lupulus yellow passionflower
Passiflora lutea coastal bedstraw
Rubia peregrina

Fire-resistant vines listed above

Same genus in the directory · the Wisteria group page

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

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

Wisteria frutescens (American wisteria). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/wisteria-frutescens/. Last verified 2026-08-23.