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Rabbit brush

Chrysothamnus sp. (accepted: Chrysothamnus) · Asteraceae · all Chrysothamnus records

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: Fire-resistant — 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: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Arizona above 3,000 feet / interior Southwest; Fremont County, Wyoming; Nevada / Great Basin; New Mexico; Oregon (Willamette Valley); Yavapai County, Arizona
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 6 scopes across 6 cited fire sources

Fremont County Firewise Plant List · Official scoped edition
- Fremont County (WY footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-02-25
  The source identifies itself as the Fremont County Firewise Plant List. FireApproved publishes its 92 exact source owners as Fremont County regional context. No methodology, current county endorsement, statewide Wyoming scope, or site-specific suitability is inferred.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico · Official scoped edition
- NM; partial normalized coverage · 2003-10-08
  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.
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley (EM 9103) · Official scoped edition
- Willamette Valley (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-02-01
  OSU Extension says EM 9103 highlights fire-resistant plants that thrive under Willamette Valley growing conditions. FireApproved publishes 172 exact owners only as valley context. The guide shares the PNW 590 lineage and is not a second independent vote or statewide site clearance.
FIREWISE Plant Materials for 3,000 ft. and Higher Elevations (AZ1289) · Official scoped edition
- Arizona at or above 3,000 feet (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-12-01
  AZ1289 is explicitly limited to Arizona elevations of 3,000 feet and higher. FireApproved publishes 69 exact owners as regional Arizona context, retaining every water and elevation condition. It is never promoted to statewide low-desert guidance or an independent Tier 1 vote.
A Compilation of Good Plant Choices for Nevada's High Fire Hazard Areas (SP-05-16) · Official scoped edition
- NV; partial normalized coverage · 2005-01-01
  University of Nevada Cooperative Extension compiled plants suited to Nevada climate zones and reported favorably by at least two upstream firewise lists. FireApproved publishes 126 exact source owners at Nevada publication scope. The source explicitly makes no independent flammability determination, so these rows remain corroborative.
Fire-Resistant and Fire-Prone Plants Common to Yavapai County (Bulletin 34) · Official scoped edition
- Yavapai County (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2025-03-14
  University of Arizona Cooperative Extension authors Bulletin 34 for Yavapai County. FireApproved publishes 198 exact source owners from its resistant and prone tables and keeps the county boundary visible. County publication scope is regional Arizona context, never statewide scope.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AZ.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: Documented range 4–8.

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.

Rabbit brush (Chrysothamnus sp.) — Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: shrub
USDA hardiness: 4–8
Grows in: AZ
Rated in: Arizona above 3,000 feet / interior Southwest; Fremont County, Wyoming; Nevada / Great Basin; New Mexico +2
Family: Asteraceae
Evidence: 6 cited sources

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.

Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley (EM 9103) · EM 9103, February 2015 · as of 2026-08-26

4–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Chrysothamnus spp. · exact match.

Source location: Rabbitbrush profile (PDF page 147).

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-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Rabbitbrush profile (PDF page 147) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 4, Shrubs, p4-r08 [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.

Avoids (1)

Fire-Resistant and Fire-Prone Plants Common to Yavapai County (Bulletin 34) — University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Yavapai County · v1.2 · original source Corroboration Expert-curated lineage: unknown

“Fire-Prone Plants”

Listed as Rabbit brush — Chrysothamnus sp.. The bulletin says fire-resistant plants tend to resist ignition when irrigated and maintained, while fire-prone plants may ignite readily and burn intensely.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

A Compilation of Good Plant Choices for Nevada's High Fire Hazard Areas (SP-05-16) — University of Nevada Cooperative Extension · SP-05-16 (2005) · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: unr-tree

“listed by at least two sources; reviewers recorded disagreement”

Compilation marks: AZ1289, CSU 6.305.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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

Chrysothamnus sp. (Rabbit brush). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/chrysothamnus/. Last verified 2026-08-23.