prairie sagewort

Artemisia frigida · Asteraceae · all Artemisia records · also called Fringed Sage · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Yes, prairie sagewort is generally treated as fire resistant, though one field trial scored it only 5 out of 10.

Five of six sources recommend it. FireSmart BC approves it as fire resistant, while Firewise programs in Wyoming, South Dakota, and New Mexico include it among suitable flowers or groundcovers. The New Mexico Forestry Division lists it from 4,000 feet through 9,000 feet and above, with very low to medium water needs. A Dovetail Partners assessment goes further, placing prairie sagewort in the low-flammability class under a published plant-rating method.

The caution comes from Idaho Firewise, whose field-trial database gives it a fire-resistance score of 5 out of 10. That scale links scores to minimum planting distance from a building, so the result is more specific than inclusion on a general Firewise list. It does not erase the other recommendations, but it argues against treating “fire resistant” as meaning harmless or suitable at any distance.

Prairie sagewort is a low-water perennial in the aster family, reaching about two feet at maturity. The broad agreement across northern, mountain, and southwestern programs supports using it in fire-conscious landscaping, while the Idaho score leaves reason to preserve defensible spacing rather than relying on the plant label alone.

Form: perennial
Mature height: ~2 ft
Water need: low
Rated in: Black Hills, South Dakota; British Columbia; Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico +2

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 5 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Black Hills, South Dakota; British Columbia; Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico; northeastern Minnesota; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Maintenance

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.
Firewise Plant Material for the Black Hills · Official scoped edition
- Black Hills (SD footprint); partial normalized coverage
  The page explicitly limits itself to the Black Hills, and NFPA Firewise's archived 2006 plant-list index files it under South Dakota. FireApproved publishes 47 exact genus or species owners from 48 printed rows. This is bounded Black Hills context, not statewide South Dakota coverage or a finding that a plant suits a particular site.
Fremont County Firewise Plant List · Official scoped edition
- Fremont County (WY footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-02-25
  The source identifies itself as the Fremont County Firewise Plant List. FireApproved publishes its 92 exact source owners as Fremont County regional context. No methodology, current county endorsement, statewide Wyoming scope, or site-specific suitability is inferred.
Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database · Official scoped edition
- Southern Idaho (ID footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2013-11-08
  The official database labels itself "For Southern Idaho" and describes Idaho residents at the urban-rangeland interface. FireApproved publishes 419 existing plant owners that cite its scored rows. This bounded Southern Idaho scope is regional context, not statewide coverage or a conclusion that the score transfers unchanged to every Idaho site.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico · Official scoped edition
- NM; partial normalized coverage · 2003-10-08
  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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AK, AZ, CO, CT, IA, ID, IL, KS, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NV, NY, PA, SD, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI, WY.
Native range: Current cited native range in AK, AZ, CO, IA, ID, IL, KS, MN, MT, ND, NE, NM, SD, TX, UT, WA, WI, WY.
Introduced / established: 1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: 2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

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.

Current native

18

exact source areas

Current introduced

1

exact source area

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

18 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alaska (AK)
Arizona (AZ)
Colorado (CO)
Iowa (IA)
Idaho (ID)
Illinois (IL)
Kansas (KS)
Minnesota (MN)
Montana (MT)
North Dakota (ND)
Nebraska (NE)
New Mexico (NM)
South Dakota (SD)
Texas (TX)
Utah (UT)
Washington (WA)
Wisconsin (WI)
Wyoming (WY)

1 introduced source area · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

New York (NY)

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.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · record table-2-row-34 · 2017 · as of 2026-08-26

3–10 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Artemisia frigida · exact match.

Source location: Table 2 row 34, Hardiness Zones column.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record ARFR4 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 2b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -43°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Artemisia frigida · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 32271, Temperature, Minimum (°F).

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 Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 60' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (mid-scale rating)
Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern…: plantable 3-30 ft from a building [Dovetail Partners planting distance] (with its recommendation)
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ extended zone (30-100 m) [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Plant Material for the Black Hills: Flowers & groundcovers [black-hills-plant-form-table] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 5, Flowers and Ground Covers, p5-r10 [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.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database — Idaho Firewise (BLM + College of Western Idaho + Idaho Botanical Garden) · original source Primary evidence Field program lineage: idaho-tree

“fire-resistance score 5 of 10” · score 5 (idaho-0-10)

Guides that discuss this plant

Wind, sage, and planting where nothing stays wet

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

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

Artemisia frigida (Fringed Sage). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/artemisia-frigida/. Last verified 2026-08-23.