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United States / Grow / red columbine

red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
Photo: (c) Andrew Lai, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

red columbine

Aquilegia canadensis · Ranunculaceae · all Aquilegia records · also called Columbine · Wikipedia

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Red columbine is generally rated fire resistant, although two North Carolina guides give it a medium flammability rating.

The 2005 North Carolina publication uses four categories; its 2025 successor uses three. Both put Aquilegia canadensis in medium, so the newer terminology does not remove this less favorable finding.

The favorable side includes low assessments from Dovetail Partners and the Sun City Texas Firewise Group. Sun City's rating concerns sustained burning under high heat. Wisconsin's natural-resources and extension agencies also feature red columbine as a Firewise plant. Maine's forestry list calls it fire resistant for landscaping specifically 30 to 100 feet from a structure.

These recommendations concern a perennial with both low and medium assessments. Maine's 30-to-100-foot placement band is part of its recommendation for red columbine, while the North Carolina guides retain a medium grade for the same species.

Form
perennial
Rated in
Georgetown, Texas; Maine; NC; North Carolina +3
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
4 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Georgetown, Texas; Maine; NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; Wisconsin / western Great Lakes; northeastern Minnesota
Typed publication scope: 5 scopes across 5 cited fire sources
  • Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · Official scoped edition
    • Northeastern Minnesota (MN footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2017-01-01

      Dovetail applies the UF/IFAS flammability key to northeastern Minnesota natives and publishes placement for 38 exact source owners. FireApproved exposes those rows only as northeastern Minnesota regional context and preserves the 3-to-30-foot versus beyond-30-foot source placement.

  • Maine fire-resistant plant list · Official scoped edition
    • ME; partial normalized coverage · 2013-10-23

      Maine Forest Service presents a partial list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. FireApproved publishes only 39 unique exact current/accepted matches plus Rhus typhina from the source's explicit parenthetical; unresolved, abbreviated, misspelled, absent, and duplicate-owner rows remain held.

  • Fire-Resistant Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) · Official scoped edition
    • NC; complete normalized coverage · 2025-03-26

      The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.

  • Firewise Plant Guide · Official scoped edition
    • Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14

      The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.

  • Firewise Landscaping — A Guide to Protecting Your Home from Wildfire · Official scoped edition
    • WI; partial normalized coverage · 2009-02-01

      Wisconsin DNR and UW-Extension co-published this Wisconsin guide, which the current DNR property-preparation page still links. FireApproved publishes 21 exact owners from the profiles and shoreland table. The co-publication is one lineage and does not establish site suitability.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 3–9.

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

36

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

36 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)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • North Dakota (ND)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • 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.

Recommends (4)

Corroboration (2 rows from 2 sources)

  • Firewise Plant Guide — Sun City Texas Firewise Group · updated January 14, 2015 · original source Corroboration HOA exhibit lineage: unknown

    “low”

    The table rates Columbine, Red — Aquilegia cancdensis low for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.

  • Maine fire-resistant plant list — Maine Forest Service, Forest Protection Division · MFS-list-updated-2013-10-23 · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: me-mfs-fire-resistant-plants

    “listed as fire-resistant for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure” · original source

    Maine Forest Service includes Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) on its partial fire-resistant plant list for landscaping 30-100 feet from a structure. The printed scientific name is a unique current-name match to this record.

Mid-scale / conditional (3)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
Same genus in the directory · the Aquilegia group page

Guides that discuss this plant

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

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

Aquilegia canadensis (Columbine). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/aquilegia-canadensis/. Last verified 2026-08-23.