cardinalflower

Lobelia cardinalis · Campanulaceae · all Lobelia records · also called Cardinal flower · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

The Lobelia cardinalis file for lobelia cardinalis pairs on list recommendation. On lobelia cardinalis, limited evidence sits versus that cardinalis row. This is not one slogan on Lobelia cardinalis. on list and limited evidence stay split for lobelia cardinalis.

On lobelia cardinalis, Lobelia cardinalis also carries 2 hardiness rows for cardinalis.

Use evidence on lobelia cardinalis for cardinalis. The jumps stay with lobelia cardinalis on Lobelia cardinalis. On lobelia cardinalis, on list sits with limited evidence on Lobelia cardinalis for cardinalis.

Form: perennial
Mature height: ~5.9 ft
Water need: low
Rated in: NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; northeastern Minnesota

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; northeastern Minnesota
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 2 scopes across 2 cited fire sources

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · Official scoped edition
- Northeastern Minnesota (MN footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2017-01-01
  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.
Fire-Resistant Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) · Official scoped edition
- NC; complete normalized coverage · 2025-03-26
  The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WI, WV.
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.

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

42

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

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

Alabama (AL)
Arkansas (AR)
Arizona (AZ)
California (CA)
Colorado (CO)
Connecticut (CT)
District of Columbia (DC)
Delaware (DE)
Florida (FL)
Georgia (GA)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Louisiana (LA)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Maine (ME)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Mississippi (MS)
North Carolina (NC)
Nebraska (NE)
New Hampshire (NH)
New Jersey (NJ)
New Mexico (NM)
Nevada (NV)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Rhode I. (RI)
South Carolina (SC)
Tennessee (TN)
Texas (TX)
Utah (UT)
Virginia (VA)
Vermont (VT)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)

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.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · record table-2-row-9 · 2017 · as of 2026-08-26

2–9 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Lobelia cardinalis · exact match.

Source location: Table 2 row 9, Hardiness Zones column.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record LOCA2 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -34°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Lobelia cardinalis · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 42478, 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.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern…: plantable 3-30 ft from a building [Dovetail Partners planting distance] (with its recommendation)
North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: lobelia-cardinalis [nc-toolbox-flammability-facet] (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.

Mid-scale / conditional (3)

Firewise Landscaping in North Carolina (E05-44596) — NC State University / NC Cooperative Extension + USFWS (Bardon, Van Druten) · 2005 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: nc-tree

“Medium flammability rating”
Fire-Resistant Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) — NC State Extension (Kays, Fawcett, Query, Thompson-Welch, Bardon) · 2025 · original source Primary evidence Expert-curated lineage: nc-tree resolves to Firewise Landscaping in North Carolina (E05-44596)

“medium flammability”

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox — plant profiles and flammability ratings — NC State Extension (plants.ces.ncsu.edu) · live facet capture accessed 2026-08-23 · original source Corroboration Expert-curated lineage: nc-tree resolves to Firewise Landscaping in North Carolina (E05-44596)

“medium flammability” · original source

NC Toolbox facet capture lists "Lobelia cardinalis" under the medium flammability tag.

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

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

Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal flower). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/lobelia-cardinalis/. Last verified 2026-08-23.