Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Cenchrus ciliaris is represented by a field shoot-measurement device, described as a standard method for measuring shoot flammability in the field. Its experimental lineage is indexed in the evidence table.
The accepted material remains limited evidence. The citations defining that boundary are visible in the present source entries, rather than being supplemented with unrecorded laboratory or field results.
Two ecological invasive reports accompany the flammability source. They remain ecological evidence within this plant profile, with their place in the pack traceable through the cited record.
Form
grass
Mature height
~3 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
Global; Queensland, Australia; Western Chaco, Córdoba Province, Argentina
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Global; Queensland, Australia; Western Chaco, Córdoba Province, Argentina
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ, CA, FL, HI, LA, MO, NM, NY, OK, PR, TX, VI.
Native range
Introduced / established
12 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 6b; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
2 ecological invasive reports.
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 24611, 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.
Protect your home and wildlife: The role of backyard vegetation in fire dynamics [wildlife-qld-article-section] (with its avoid rating)
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.
Appendix S5 mean across six grass-form replicates for Cenchrus ciliaris: MT 546 °C; BL 46.3 cm; BT 74 s; BR 0.69 cm/s; BB 6.00 on the six-category interval scale. Fresh field samples were preheated for 2 min at 150 °C and exposed to the blowtorch for 10 s. The paper gives no directional FL threshold.
6 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
Primary study Jaureguiberry2011: Jaureguiberry, P., Bertone, G., & Díaz, S. (2011). Device for the standard measurement of shoot flammability in the field. Austral Ecology, 36, 821-829.
Shared row context: plant part branches; fuel all; predrying yes; device grill; site Jaureguiberry2011-1; sampling september.
FLAMITS record 11326; Combustibility measurement; plant part inner bark; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Roldan2020-1; sampling march and may. Primary study Roldan2020: Roldan-Nicolau, E., Terrazas, T., Montesinos, M. N., Pi, T., & Tinoco-Ojanguren, C. (2020). Effect of buffelgrass fires on two Sonoran Desert trees: Bark and structural analyses. Journal of Arid Environments, 178, 104166.
