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Chasmanthium latifolium

Chasmanthium latifolium · Poaceae

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Georgetown, Texas; Global
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

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; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: Documented minimum 3b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status: Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status: Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here: No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
Broader regional context: Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context: Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.

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.

Form: grass
USDA hardiness: Minimum 3b; upper limit not documented
Mature height: ~4.6 ft
Water need: moderate
Current cited native range: 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
Grows in: AL, AR, AZ, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA +21
Rated in: Georgetown, Texas; Global
Family: Poaceae
Evidence: 13 cited sources

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.

USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record CHLA5 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -33°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Chasmanthium latifolium · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 21302, 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.

Firewise Plant Guide: Ornamental Grasses [Sun City plant-table sections] (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.

Avoids (1)

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)

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.
- “time to flaming (s): 1.92” · score 1.92 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15909; Ignitability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flaming duration (s): 27.19” · score 27.19 (FLAMITS — flaming duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15910; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “smouldering duration (s): 11.852” · score 11.852 (FLAMITS — smouldering duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15911; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flame height (cm): 57” · score 57 (FLAMITS — flame height (cm))
  
  FLAMITS record 15912; Combustibility measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “time to flaming (s): 1.95” · score 1.95 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15913; Ignitability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flaming duration (s): 22.588” · score 22.588 (FLAMITS — flaming duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15914; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “smouldering duration (s): 9.446” · score 9.446 (FLAMITS — smouldering duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15915; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flame height (cm): 60” · score 60 (FLAMITS — flame height (cm))
  
  FLAMITS record 15916; Combustibility measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “time to flaming (s): 4.361481481” · score 4.361481481 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 17346; Ignitability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Gao2018-1; sampling june to august 2016. Primary study Gao2018: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2018). Grass Canopy Architecture Influences Temperature Exposure at Soil Surface. Fire 1, 35.
- “flaming duration (s): 51.46296296” · score 51.46296296 (FLAMITS — flaming duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 17347; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Gao2018-1; sampling june to august 2016. Primary study Gao2018: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2018). Grass Canopy Architecture Influences Temperature Exposure at Soil Surface. Fire 1, 35.
- “smouldering duration (s): 36.06814815” · score 36.06814815 (FLAMITS — smouldering duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 17348; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Gao2018-1; sampling june to august 2016. Primary study Gao2018: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2018). Grass Canopy Architecture Influences Temperature Exposure at Soil Surface. Fire 1, 35.
- “flame height (cm): 98.59259259” · score 98.59259259 (FLAMITS — flame height (cm))
  
  FLAMITS record 17349; Combustibility measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying yes; device burning bench; site Gao2018-1; sampling june to august 2016. Primary study Gao2018: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2018). Grass Canopy Architecture Influences Temperature Exposure at Soil Surface. Fire 1, 35.

Fire-resistant grasss instead

Fox sedge
Carex vulpinoidea

Fescue, Tall
Festuca arundinacea

Tall fescue
Lolium arundinaceum

Whitegrass
Leersia virginica

Green bulrush
Scirpus atrovirens

Woolgrass bulrush
Scirpus cyperinus

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

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF ·

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