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Dotted Gay Feather

Liatris punctata · Asteraceae · all Liatris 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: Austin, Texas; Fremont County, Wyoming; Georgetown, Texas; New Mexico; Oregon (Willamette Valley); southern Idaho / Intermountain
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.
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.
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 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.
Firewise Landscaping (Travis County) · Official scoped edition
- Travis County, Austin area (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2024-01-16
  Texas A&M AgriLife Extension publishes this page through its Travis County horticulture program. FireApproved publishes 56 exact owners and retains the source's zone and warning conditions. This is county/Austin regional context, not a second statewide Texas table or site clearance.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AR, CO, IA, ID, IL, KS, LA, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK, SD, TN, TX, WI, WY.
Native range: Current cited native range in AR, CO, IA, IL, KS, LA, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK, SD, TX, WI, WY.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: 2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

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.

Dotted Gay Feather (Liatris punctata) — Photo: (c) Jared Shorma, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: perennial
USDA hardiness: Applicable source statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each source
Mature height: ~2 ft
Water need: moderate
Current cited native range: AR, CO, IA, IL, KS, LA, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK, SD, TX, WI, WY
Grows in: AR, CO, IA, ID, IL, KS, LA, MI +13
Rated in: Austin, Texas; Fremont County, Wyoming; Georgetown, Texas; New Mexico +2
Family: Asteraceae
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

19

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

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

Arkansas (AR)
Colorado (CO)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Kansas (KS)
Louisiana (LA)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Montana (MT)
North Dakota (ND)
Nebraska (NE)
New Mexico (NM)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
South Dakota (SD)
Texas (TX)
Wisconsin (WI)
Wyoming (WY)

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.

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

3–12 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Liatris punctata · exact match.

Source location: Dotted Gayfeather profile (PDF page 49).
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record LIPU · 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: Liatris punctata · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 37435, 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 40' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Dotted Gayfeather profile (PDF page 49) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping: Perennials [Travis County Firewise page sections] (with its avoid rating)
Firewise Plant Guide: Perennials [Sun City plant-table sections] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 5, Flowers and Ground Covers, p5-r33 [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)

Firewise Landscaping (Travis County) — Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Travis County · page modified 2024-01-16 · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: unknown

“Plants to Avoid for Zone 1 (within 30′ of Structure)”

Listed as Gayfeather — Liatris punctata var. mucronata. The page says Zone 1 entries should be restricted to zones 2 or 3; all-zone entries are highly flammable due to volatile oils or growth habit.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

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 7 of 10” · score 7 (idaho-0-10)

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

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

Liatris punctata (Dotted Gay Feather). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/liatris-punctata/. Last verified 2026-08-23.