Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, winterfat is rated fire resistant, though a California field trial found poor performance for a different use.
Montana State University Extension lists winterfat among fire-resistant plants adapted to Montana. Winterfat also appears on the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension's fire-resistant list for Yavapai County, with irrigation and maintenance required. Such plants tend to resist ignition; they are not fireproof. Those two recommendations come from expert-curated regional plant lists rather than a laboratory ignition test.
The USDA Forest Service supplies the caution. In a field trial of vegetation for southern California chaparral clearings, winterfat appeared in the “Poor performance” section. That scale judged shrub performance at those sites, not simply whether a plant was fire resistant or fire prone. Poor results in that setting therefore do not directly contradict the extension lists, but they do warn against assuming that a resistant rating guarantees suitability in every climate or planting role.
Winterfat is a low-water shrub in the amaranth family, reaching about two feet at maturity. Hardy to USDA zone 3b, winterfat is native in the southwestern, northwestern, north-central, and south-central United States. The practical conclusion is a qualified yes: two regional extension services recommend it as fire resistant, but the limited evidence still calls for irrigation, maintenance, and attention to local growing conditions.
Form
shrub
Mature height
~2 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
California; Montana / Northern Rockies; Yavapai County, Arizona
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
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, CA, CO, ID, KS, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CA, CO, ID, KS, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3b; no upper limit is documented.
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.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 59137, 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.
Low-volume and slow-burning vegetation for planting on cl…: Table 3: Poor performance [nord-green-brushland-clearing-performance] (mid-scale 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.
Listed as Winterfat — Krascheninnikovia lanata. The bulletin says fire-resistant plants tend to resist ignition when irrigated and maintained, while fire-prone plants may ignite readily and burn intensely.
