Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Persian onion is rated fire resistant, although the primary support for that rating is limited.
Oregon State, Washington State, and University of Idaho Extension include Persian onion among recommended fire-resistant landscape plants. Their guidance uses a binary recommendation based on presence in the list and gives the plant a range of USDA zones 5a to 8b. Oregon State University Extension also profiles it as Star of Persia in a perennial gallery that directs gardeners toward plants for fire-resistant landscapes.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and West Virginia Division of Forestry reach the same general conclusion. Their compiled guide describes Allium christophii as relatively resistant to fire and among the listed species with stronger resistance to wildfire ignition. Unlike the extension guidance, this source provides neither a comparative scale nor a method specific to Persian onion.
The findings therefore agree on the classification while differing in how they present it. Persian onion is a perennial in the Amaryllidaceae family, and the available guidance supports treating it as fire resistant within its stated hardiness range. The limitation is precision: these sources provide affirmative classifications, not a numerical measure of the plant’s ignition behavior.
Form
perennial
Rated in
Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho)
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
NJ; partial normalized coverage
New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 5–8.
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.
5–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Allium cristophii · exact match.
Source location: ‘Star of Persia’ allium profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
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-resistant plant profile galleries: ‘Star of Persia’ allium — Allium cristophii [osu-2023-perennials-gallery] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Herbaceous Annuals and Perennials [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (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.
Listed as Allium christophii (Star of Persia). The source says listed species exhibit stronger resistance to ignition by wildfires. Source comments: Prefers sun or partial shade. Do Not plant Allium vineale
