Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Silvery lupine has favorable fire evidence, with an eight on Colorado's ten-point scale and two supporting plant listings.
The Colorado extension and forest service publication places Lupinus argenteus at 8 out of 10 for ignitability. For Zones 1 and 2 of defensible space, that publication sets its acceptable scores at eight, nine, or ten. Silvery lupine consequently meets the stated criterion at the lower end of the acceptable range.
FireSmart BC also lists the species as fire resistant. Fremont County includes silver lupine in its Firewise ground-cover section, adding another regional planting reference. The county's general description of moist, low-debris, low-growing Firewise plants characterizes the group, rather than documenting measured traits of each lupine.
For this perennial in the legume family, the sources support a fire-resistant classification on limited primary evidence. The numerical result explains why it qualifies under Colorado's rule, and the two favorable listings corroborate the favorable Colorado assessment.
Form
perennial
Mature height
~1.5 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
British Columbia; Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Fremont County, Wyoming
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Colorado State University Extension and the Colorado State Forest Service publish Fact Sheet 6.305 for Colorado's WUI and varied ecosystems. FireApproved exposes all 114 exact source owners at Colorado publication scope while retaining score, elevation, water, and Idaho-carrier lineage. Publication scope is not suitability for every Colorado site or zone.
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.
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, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 2b; 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 80285, 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.
FireSmart BC Plant Program: suitable for HIZ intermediate zone (10-30 m) [FireSmart BC Home Ignition Zone] (with its recommendation)
Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants: suitable for defensible-space zones 1-2 (score 8+) [CSU defensible-space zone] (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 — Lupinus argenteus — Silver Lupine”
Listed in the source's Ground Covers section; the page describes its listed Firewise plants as generally low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist.
