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Purple poppymallow is consistently rated fire resistant by the sources that assess it.
Purple poppymallow has fire-resistant listings from Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the joint extension services of Oregon State, Washington State, and the University of Idaho. Oregon State’s educational gallery also recommends it among groundcovers for a fire-resistant landscape, while the Sun City Texas Firewise Group assigns it a low flammability hazard.
The numerical ratings support the same conclusion. In Idaho Firewise’s field-trial ratings, purple poppymallow scores 8 out of 10 for fire resistance. Colorado State University Extension and the Colorado State Forest Service give it an ignitability score of 8 out of 10, meeting their threshold for defensible-space zones 1 and 2. Colorado’s reliance on the Idaho materials for scoring means the matching eights should not be counted as two wholly separate trials.
Purple poppymallow is a roughly one-foot-tall groundcover in the mallow family that calls for moderate water. It is native across broad parts of the United States and is listed for USDA zones 4a through 9b. These ratings make it a well-supported choice for a fire-resistant landscape, within the conditions and regional guidance used by each source.
Form
groundcover
Mature height
~1 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Georgetown, Texas; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho) +2
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.
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.
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.
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.
Eastern Washington (WA footprint); partial normalized coverage
Washington DNR publishes the guide for Eastern Washington and says it compiles plants from other Firewise documents that are likely to thrive there. FireApproved publishes 46 exact owners only as eastern Washington context. The rows are corroborative, not empirical or statewide.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AR, AZ, CO, FL, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, NM, OK, OR, PA, TX, VA, WA, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in AR, CO, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, NM, OK, TX.
Introduced / established
8 sourced range or established records. 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.
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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 65897, 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 30' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (with its recommendation)
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)
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.
“Choose the right groundcover plants for your fire-resistant landscape”
· original source
The Poppy mallow profile prints Callirhoe involucrata. The gallery points to PNW 590 for complete details.
Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants (Fact Sheet 6.305) — Colorado State University Extension / Colorado State Forest Service (Wildfire Mitigation Series) · 2025 · original sourcePrimary evidenceField programlineage: idaho-tree resolves to Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database
“ignitability score 8 of 10”
· score 8 (idaho-0-10)
CSU 6.305 table lists Callirhoe involucrata (poppy mallow) with the preserved ignitability score.
The table rates Winecup, Perennial — Callirhoe involucrata low for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
