Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Little sunflower is rated fire resistant, although one field-trial score tempers the recommendations from two regional plant lists.
Oregon State University Extension profiles Helianthus pumilus as a fire-resistant perennial that thrives in Willamette Valley growing conditions. Fremont County Firewise also includes it among its Firewise ground covers. That Wyoming source describes the plants on its list generally as low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist, but it does not give little sunflower a separate comparative class.
Idaho Firewise supplies the more cautious finding: a fire-resistance score of 7 out of 10. On the scale used with that database, scores of 8 to 10 are recommended, while 4 to 7 are mixed. The apparent difference comes from unlike judgments. The Oregon and Wyoming sources use inclusion on curated or compiled regional lists as their recommendation, while Idaho uses a scored field trial tied to planting distance.
Little sunflower is a member of the aster family, native to the Northwestern United States, and suited to USDA zones 6a through 9b. Taken together, the findings support a qualified yes: two regional services recommend it, while the trial score places it just below the recommended band.
Form
perennial
Rated in
Fremont County, Wyoming; Oregon (Willamette Valley); southern Idaho / Intermountain
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
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.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in CO, ID, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in CO, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 6–9.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
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.
6–9 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Helianthus pumilus · exact match.
Source location: Small Sunflower profile (PDF page 90).
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 40' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Small Sunflower profile (PDF page 90) [osu-em-9103-profile] (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.
“Fremont County Firewise Plant List — Helianthus pumilus — Small Sunflower”
Listed in the source's Ground Covers section; the page describes its listed Firewise plants as generally low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist.
