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Meadow foxtail has been tested for flammability, but its fire resistance remains unsettled.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s 2026 assessment assigns it a “Moderate/high flammability” classification. That assessment uses a seven-level scale grounded in shoot-flammability testing at Lincoln University. The scale runs from very low to very high, placing meadow foxtail’s classification above moderate and below high.
The distinction between a test classification and a planting verdict matters. Shoot-flammability testing examines how plant shoots burn under test conditions. A class on that scale is not a percentage chance that a plant will ignite in a garden, and it does not predict what will happen during a particular fire. The result gives a specific description of flammability without settling the broader question of suitability for a fire-resistant planting.
Alopecurus pratensis belongs to the grass family, Poaceae. Meadow foxtail needs substantial water and grows to about 3 feet at maturity. Its water requirement describes a cultivation need, not a fire-test result. For someone choosing garden plants, those facts deserve separate consideration: the grass needs substantial water, its tested flammability falls between moderate and high, and an overall fire-resistance verdict remains open.
Form
grass
Mature height
~3 ft
Water need
high
Rated in
New Zealand
Uses
pasture
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence
Evidence regions
New Zealand
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AK, AL, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
41 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3a; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
3 ecological invasive reports.
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: PlantCharacteristics record 20274, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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.
Mid-scale / conditional (1)
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
