Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Keep Indian ricegrass away from structures: its Arizona FIREWISE listing conflicts with a highly flammable verdict.
For Indian ricegrass, a score of 1 out of 10 on Idaho Firewise’s field-trial scale means keeping it 100 feet or more from structures. The finding comes from southern Idaho and the Intermountain region, and it is the stronger basis for the overall warning.
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension takes the opposite practical position. Its compiled tables include Indian ricegrass among FIREWISE plant materials for Arizona locations above 3,000 feet. This is a yes-or-no recommendation for a particular region and elevation, rather than a score on Idaho Firewise’s field-trial scale. The two sources therefore answer the landscaping question through different methods and settings. Arizona’s inclusion supports using the grass in its stated setting, but it does not erase Idaho Firewise’s score.
Indian ricegrass is a low-water grass in the Poaceae family. It reaches about two feet at maturity and is hardy to USDA zone 3b. Those facts describe the plant but do not settle the disagreement about fire behavior. Because the field trial places it firmly in the avoid range, the safer reading is to regard Indian ricegrass as highly flammable and not rely on the Arizona listing outside its stated conditions.
Southern Idaho (ID footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2013-11-08
The official database labels itself "For Southern Idaho" and describes Idaho residents at the urban-rangeland interface. FireApproved publishes 419 existing plant owners that cite its scored rows. This bounded Southern Idaho scope is regional context, not statewide coverage or a conclusion that the score transfers unchanged to every Idaho site.
Arizona at or above 3,000 feet (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-12-01
AZ1289 is explicitly limited to Arizona elevations of 3,000 feet and higher. FireApproved publishes 69 exact owners as regional Arizona context, retaining every water and elevation condition. It is never promoted to statewide low-desert guidance or an independent Tier 1 vote.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AR, AZ, CA, CO, ID, KS, MN, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3b; no upper limit is documented.
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: PlantCharacteristics record 19939, 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.
Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 100'+ from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (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.
