Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Golden columbine has favorable fire-resistance guidance, including a more narrowly identified variety in the Texas evidence.
The Colorado extension and forest-service fact sheet gives Aquilegia chrysantha an ignitability rating of 8 out of 10. That falls in its recommended range. The number belongs to this source’s scoring system; it should not be combined numerically with the low-hazard label used by Sun City Texas.
The Texas entry names Aquilegia chrysantha variety Hinckleyana. Its low rating concerns the ease of sustained burning at high temperatures, and the named variety is part of the finding. It contributes favorable evidence without automatically rating every golden columbine variety the same way.
New Mexico’s Forestry Division lists yellow columbine with medium-to-high water needs and favorable elevation entries from 4,000 feet through 9,000 feet and above. For a planting decision, that water-and-elevation information accompanies the fire-resistant recommendation. Together, the sources support a favorable answer on limited evidence while retaining the distinction between the species and the Texas variety.
Form
perennial
Water need
high
Rated in
Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Georgetown, Texas; New Mexico
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Colorado State University Extension and the Colorado State Forest Service publish Fact Sheet 6.305 for Colorado's WUI and varied ecosystems. FireApproved exposes all 114 exact source owners at Colorado publication scope while retaining score, elevation, water, and Idaho-carrier lineage. Publication scope is not suitability for every Colorado site or zone.
New Mexico Forestry Division publishes this as its FireWise Plant List for New Mexico. FireApproved accounts for all 140 printed rows and publishes 95 exact same-rank owners already represented in the directory; 29 exact taxa without an existing record, 14 unresolved spellings or higher-rank matches, one compound taxon cell, and one species row whose only apparent owner has an infraspecific printed identity remain held. Every published row retains the source's Y, N, ?, or blank elevation cells. Publication scope does not erase those elevation limits or establish suitability for every New Mexico site.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ, CO, NM, TX, UT.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CO, NM, TX, UT.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
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.
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.
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.
Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants: suitable for defensible-space zones 1-2 (score 8+) [CSU defensible-space zone] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Plant Guide: Perennials [Sun City plant-table sections] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 5, Flowers and Ground Covers, p5-r07 [nm-emnrd-firewise-table-row] (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.
The table rates Columbine, Yellow — Aquilegia chrysantha var Hinckleyana low for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original sourceCorroborationCompilationlineage: csu-nmsu-firewise
“FireWise Plant List for New Mexico”
Listed as Aquilegia chrysantha (Yellow columbine) in Flowers and Ground Covers. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=Y, 5,000 ft=Y, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=Y, 8,000 ft=Y, 9,000+ ft=Y. Water need: M-H; sun/shade: S/PS; mature height: 1-2’; approximate bloom: Jul.
