Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, blazing star is recommended for fire-resistant landscapes.
Ohio State University Extension gives Liatris an L rating, the recommended low-flammability band on its five-point scale. For planting 3 to 30 feet from a building, Dovetail Partners permits low-flammability plants such as blazing star. FireSmart BC approves it as fire resistant, while the joint Oregon, Washington, and Idaho extension guide lists it as fire resistant.
The placement-based sources agree without using identical systems. The Texas A&M Forest Service lists blazing star as gay feather among its acceptable fire-resistant examples in the 10-to-30-foot band. Oregon State University Extension Service includes a Liatris profile in its gallery of perennial plants to choose for a fire-resistant landscape.
Blazing star is a perennial in the Asteraceae family. The joint extension guide gives it a hardiness range of USDA zones 3a to 8b, while Ohio State describes it as a drought-tolerant prairie native requiring sun to partial shade. Those details help determine where it fits, but the fire judgment itself is unusually consistent: expert-curated lists, a keyed flammability method, and the FireSmart program all place blazing star among fire-resistant choices.
Form
perennial
Rated in
British Columbia; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest +3
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
British Columbia; Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; OR/WA/ID; Ohio / Midwest; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); Texas; northeastern Minnesota
Maintenance
Typed publication scope: 7 scopes across 5 cited fire sources
Dovetail applies the UF/IFAS flammability key to northeastern Minnesota natives and publishes placement for 38 exact source owners. FireApproved exposes those rows only as northeastern Minnesota regional context and preserves the 3-to-30-foot versus beyond-30-foot source placement.
Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
NJ; partial normalized coverage
New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 921 is an Ohio publication that describes Ohio fire seasons and landscape conditions and labels nativity to Ohio. FireApproved publishes 352 exact source-owning plant records from its eight rated tables. This historical publication scope does not assert current extension endorsement or that a listed plant suits every Ohio site.
The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.
Texas A&M Forest Service says the guide's landscape elements apply across Texas and at all scales. FireApproved publishes ten exact genus owners from its placement-band examples and holds Primrose and Bluebells rather than guessing taxa. The examples are not a complete Texas plant palette.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
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
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.
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.
3–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Liatris spp. · exact match.
Source location: Blazing star profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
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.
Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern…: plantable 3-30 ft from a building [Dovetail Partners planting distance] (with its recommendation)
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ extended zone (30-100 m) [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping in Texas: The Right Plant for the Ri…: 10 feet to 30 feet [tamfs-defensible-space] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant plant profile galleries: Blazing star — Liatris spp. [osu-2023-perennials-gallery] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Herbaceous Annuals and Perennials [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (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.
Listed as Liatris spp. (Gayfeather, Blazing Star). The source says listed species exhibit stronger resistance to ignition by wildfires. Source comments: Prefers full sun
