Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, mariposa lily is rated fire resistant by extension specialists, a field trial, and a state forestry agency.
Oregon State, Washington State, and University of Idaho extension services list Calochortus as fire resistant. Idaho Firewise gives it an 8 of 10, within the recommended band of its field-trial scale. Oregon State’s November 2023 educational gallery also profiles Calochortus species among perennial plants chosen for a fire-resistant landscape. The agreement spans expert recommendations and field-trial scoring, so the fire-resistant verdict does not rest on one kind of assessment.
Elevation changes that guidance. New Mexico’s Forestry Division includes Calochortus species in its FireWise plant list. Its cells say yes at 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, and 8,000 feet; not recommended at 9,000 feet and above; and unknown or doubtful at 4,000 feet. It also gives moderate-to-high water needs and a July-to-August bloom period.
Mariposa lily is a perennial in the lily family, with a published range of USDA zones 4a through 7b. Taken together, the sources support treating it as a fire-resistant landscape choice while following the elevation guidance where that applies.
Form
perennial
Rated in
New Mexico; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); southern Idaho / Intermountain
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
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.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–7.
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.
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.
4–7 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Calochortus spp. · exact match.
Source location: Mariposa lily profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
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)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 5, Flowers and Ground Covers, p5-r12 [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.
“Choose the right perennial plants for your fire-resistant landscape”
· original source
The Mariposa lily profile prints Calochortus species. The gallery points to PNW 590 for complete details.
Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
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 Calochortus spp. (Mariposa lily) in Flowers and Ground Covers. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=?, 5,000 ft=Y, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=Y, 8,000 ft=Y, 9,000+ ft=N. Water need: M-H; sun/shade: S; mature height: .5-2’; approximate bloom: Jul-Aug.
