FireApproved

United States / Grow / horseflyweed

horseflyweed (Baptisia tinctoria)
Photo: (c) aarongunnar, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

horseflyweed

Baptisia tinctoria · Fabaceae · all Baptisia records · also called Yellow wild indigo · Wikipedia

View Saved

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.

Horseflyweed is rated medium in flammability, so the available findings do not support calling it fire resistant.

North Carolina State’s extension sources place horseflyweed in the medium flammability category. The 2005 guide puts medium between low, high and extreme on its four-part scale. Its 2025 successor again rates the plant medium, this time on a low-medium-high scale, and the Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox corroborates that classification. Medium represents a mixed result, not a recommendation comparable to the low category.

Placement and upkeep are part of that judgment. The 2005 guidance calls for low-flammability plants nearest the house and stresses spacing, removal of dried foliage, litter and dead branches, and seasonal pruning. The 2025 guidance does not recommend moderately to highly flammable species; when homeowners include them, it advises placing them as far from the home as possible and surrounding them with fuel breaks.

Horseflyweed is a low-water perennial that reaches about 2.5 feet at maturity, but those characteristics do not turn its medium rating into a resistant one. For firewise placement, treat it as a plant requiring distance, spacing and regular removal of dry material, rather than as a low-flammability choice beside the house.

Form
perennial
Mature height
~2.5 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • 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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in CT, DE, GA, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 7a; no upper limit is documented.

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

23

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

23 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • 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.

Mid-scale / conditional (3)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

Fire-resistant perennials instead

butterfly milkweed
Asclepias tuberosa red columbine
Aquilegia canadensis wild bergamot
Monarda fistulosa fall phlox
Phlox paniculata spotted geranium
Geranium maculatum Jack in the pulpit
Arisaema triphyllum
Same genus in the directory · the Baptisia group page

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

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

Baptisia tinctoria (Yellow wild indigo). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/baptisia-tinctoria/. Last verified 2026-08-23.