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Sheep Fescue

Festuca ovina · Poaceae · all Festuca 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: 5 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: British Columbia; Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Great Basin; Montana / Northern Rockies; Northern Nevada / Great Basin; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources

Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants (Fact Sheet 6.305) · Official scoped edition
- CO; partial normalized coverage · 2025-07-01
  Colorado State University Extension and the Colorado State Forest Service publish Fact Sheet 6.305 for Colorado's WUI and varied ecosystems. FireApproved exposes all 114 exact source owners at Colorado publication scope while retaining score, elevation, water, and Idaho-carrier lineage. Publication scope is not suitability for every Colorado site or zone.
Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database · Official scoped edition
- 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.
Fire-Resistant Plants for Montana Landscapes (MontGuide MT200101AG) · Official scoped edition
- MT; partial normalized coverage · 2022-04-01
  The April 2022 MontGuide explicitly presents fire-resistant species adapted to Montana. FireApproved publishes 92 exact plant records from the source while retaining excluded genus, family, and unresolved rows; the guide itself says not every listed species grows in every part of the state.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in CA, CT, DE, ID, IL, KY, MA, ME, MO, NH, NJ, NY, OR, RI, SC, UT, VT, WA.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: 16 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: Documented minimum 2b; 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.

Sheep Fescue (Festuca ovina) — Photo: (c) Cheng-Tao Lin, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: grass
USDA hardiness: Minimum 2b; upper limit not documented
Mature height: ~0.5 ft
Water need: low
Grows in: CA, CT, DE, ID, IL, KY, MA, ME +10
Rated in: British Columbia; Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Great Basin; Montana / Northern Rockies +2
Family: Poaceae
Evidence: 6 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

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

15

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

15 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

California (CA)
Connecticut (CT)
Delaware (DE)
Illinois (IL)
Kentucky (KY)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maine (ME)
Missouri (MO)
New Hampshire (NH)
Oregon (OR)
Rhode I. (RI)
South Carolina (SC)
Utah (UT)
Vermont (VT)
Washington (WA)

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 FEOV · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 2b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -43°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Festuca ovina · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 23119, 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.

Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 20' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (with its recommendation)
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ intermediate zone (10-30 m) [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Fuel Breaks to Reduce Large Wildfire Impacts in Sagebrush…: common plant material option for a managed greenstrip in sagebrush ecosystems [nrcs-tn66-greenstrip] (with its recommendation)
Greenstrips: Another Tool to Manage Wildfire: common perennial plant used in a maintained northern Nevada greenstrip [unr-fs-97-36-greenstrip] (with its recommendation)
Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants: suitable for defensible-space zones 1-2 (score 8+) [CSU defensible-space zone] (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.

Recommends (6)

Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database — Idaho Firewise (BLM + College of Western Idaho + Idaho Botanical Garden) · original source Primary evidence Field program lineage: idaho-tree

“fire-resistance score 9 of 10” · score 9 (idaho-0-10)
FireSmart BC Plant Program — fire-resistant plant chart — FireSmart BC · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: firesmart-bc-plant-database

“FireSmart-approved fire-resistant plant”
Fire-Resistant Plants for Montana Landscapes (MontGuide MT200101AG) — Montana State University Extension · Current as of 4/22 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: msu-montguide

“listed fire-resistant”

Listed among fire-resistant plant species adapted to Montana.
Fuel Breaks to Reduce Large Wildfire Impacts in Sagebrush Ecosystems (Plant Materials Technical Note 66) — USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Boise, Idaho · Plant Materials Technical Note 66 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: greenstrip-tree

“Common plant material options for greenstrips.”

Appendix B row: Sheep Fescue (Festuca ovina). Origin: Introduced; lifeform: Bunchgrass; relative height: Low; seedling vigor: Low; longevity: Long. Precipitation zone: 12-22 in; soil texture: fine and medium; seeds/lb: 680,000; single-species drill seeding rate: 4 lb/ac; seeding depth: 0-1/4 in. Recommended releases: ‘Covar’, ‘Bighorn’.
Greenstrips: Another Tool to Manage Wildfire (Fact Sheet 97-36) — University of Nevada Cooperative Extension · Fact Sheet 97-36 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: greenstrip-tree

“Common perennial plants used in greenstrips and selected characteristics important to their establishment and use”

Table 1 row: Sheep fescue (Festuca ovina). Minimum yearly precipitation: 10-14 inches; salt or alkali tolerance: Low; status: N; growth form, flower color, or season: Bunch; varieties: ‘Covar’, ‘Durar’. The fact sheet says greenstrips should be grazed or mown frequently enough to reduce fuel buildup; otherwise their effectiveness is reduced dramatically.
Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants (Fact Sheet 6.305) — Colorado State University Extension / Colorado State Forest Service (Wildfire Mitigation Series) · 2025 · original source Primary evidence Field program lineage: idaho-tree resolves to Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database

“ignitability score 9 of 10” · score 9 (idaho-0-10)

CSU 6.305 table lists Festuca ovina (sheep fescue) with the preserved ignitability score.

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

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Festuca ovina (Sheep Fescue). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/festuca-ovina/. Last verified 2026-08-23.