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Indian woodoats

Chasmanthium latifolium · Poaceae · also called Chasmanthium latifolium · Wikipedia

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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.

Form
grass
Mature height
~4.6 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Georgetown, Texas; Global
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
Georgetown, Texas; Global
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Firewise Plant Guide · Official scoped edition
    • 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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, AZ, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NM, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, AZ, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NE, NJ, NM, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, WV.
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3b; 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

29

exact source areas

Current introduced

1

exact source area

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

29 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • West Virginia (WV)
1 introduced source area · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Massachusetts (MA)

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.

Avoids (1)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

  • Firewise Plant Guide — Sun City Texas Firewise Group · updated January 14, 2015 · original source Corroboration HOA exhibit lineage: unknown

    “high”

    The table rates Inland Sea Oats — Chasmanthium latifolium high for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.

Listed without a rating (12)
Corroboration (12 rows from 1 source)

  • FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database — Dryad / Global Ecology and Biogeography · Dryad version 9 · original source Corroboration Trait database lineage: meta-aggregator

    12 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.

    • Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.

      Shared row context: plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019.

      • Shared measurement context: Ignitability measurement.

        • “time to flaming (s): 1.92”

          FLAMITS record 15909.

        • “time to flaming (s): 1.95”

          FLAMITS record 15913.

      • Shared measurement context: Sustainability measurement.

        • “flaming duration (s): 27.19”

          FLAMITS record 15910.

        • “smouldering duration (s): 11.852”

          FLAMITS record 15911.

        • “flaming duration (s): 22.588”

          FLAMITS record 15914.

        • “smouldering duration (s): 9.446”

          FLAMITS record 15915.

      • Shared measurement context: Combustibility measurement.

        • “flame height (cm): 57”

          FLAMITS record 15912.

        • “flame height (cm): 60”

          FLAMITS record 15916.

    • Primary study Gao2018: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2018). Grass Canopy Architecture Influences Temperature Exposure at Soil Surface. Fire 1, 35.

      Shared row context: plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Gao2018-1; sampling june to august 2016.

      • “time to flaming (s): 4.361481481”

        FLAMITS record 17346; Ignitability measurement.

      • Shared measurement context: Sustainability measurement.

        • “flaming duration (s): 51.46296296”

          FLAMITS record 17347.

        • “smouldering duration (s): 36.06814815”

          FLAMITS record 17348.

      • “flame height (cm): 98.59259259”

        FLAMITS record 17349; Combustibility measurement.

Fire-resistant grasss instead

fox sedge
Carex vulpinoidea tall fescue
Festuca arundinacea tall fescue
Lolium arundinaceum whitegrass
Leersia virginica green bulrush
Scirpus atrovirens woolgrass
Scirpus cyperinus

Last verified 2026-08-25. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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

Chasmanthium latifolium (Chasmanthium latifolium). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/chasmanthium-latifolium/. Last verified 2026-08-25.