Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, pussytoes is rated fire resistant, with extension services in several regions recommending it for fire-resistant landscaping.
The agreement spans five assessments. Oregon State, Washington State, and the University of Idaho jointly list pussytoes as fire resistant. Nevada’s cooperative extension includes it because at least two of the western sources in its compilation rated it favorably. Montana State lists it among fire-resistant plants adapted to Montana, while Michigan State considers Antennaria species wildfire resistant and suitable for that state’s climate. Oregon State also profiles it as a groundcover for fire-resistant landscapes.
These are expert planting recommendations rather than laboratory measurements of ignition or heat release. Their strength is practical agreement across the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, and Great Lakes. Each uses a yes-or-no listing system, so none supplies a finer score or promises that the plant cannot burn. The shared conclusion is narrower and useful: pussytoes is a recommended groundcover where reducing landscape fire risk is the goal.
Pussytoes belongs to the aster family and is listed for USDA zones 4a through 7b. Within that range, the balance of the cited extension guidance supports treating it as a fire-resistant choice.
Form
groundcover
Rated in
Michigan / Great Lakes; Montana / Northern Rockies; Nevada / Great Basin; OR/WA/ID +1
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
The April 2022 MontGuide explicitly presents fire-resistant species adapted to Montana. FireApproved publishes 92 exact plant records from the source while retaining excluded genus, family, and unresolved rows; the guide itself says not every listed species grows in every part of the state.
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.
University of Nevada Cooperative Extension compiled plants suited to Nevada climate zones and reported favorably by at least two upstream firewise lists. FireApproved publishes 126 exact source owners at Nevada publication scope. The source explicitly makes no independent flammability determination, so these rows remain corroborative.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–7.
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.
4–7 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Antennaria spp. · exact match.
Source location: Pussytoes or cat’s ears 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: Pussytoes or cat’s ears — Antennaria spp. [osu-2023-groundcovers-gallery] (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.
