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United States / Grow / alfalfa

alfalfa (Medicago sativa)
Photo: (c) Duarte Frade, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

alfalfa

Medicago sativa · Fabaceae · all Medicago records · Wikipedia

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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.

Alfalfa is rated fire resistant, though two of its favorable listings apply specifically to greenstrips rather than home landscaping.

The clearest ratings come from Idaho Firewise and Fire and Emergency New Zealand. Idaho Firewise gives alfalfa 10 out of 10, the highest score on a scale tied to planting distance. New Zealand places it in the “very low” band of a seven-level flammability scale based on shoot testing. Utah State University Extension also calls alfalfa firewise when properly used and maintained, while Montana State University Extension lists it among fire-resistant plants adapted to that state.

The other two sources support a narrower use. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service names alfalfa as an option for greenstrips in Great Basin settings with 12 to 25 inches of precipitation and fine or medium soils. The Society for Range Management likewise identifies it as a species frequently used in semiarid greenstrips, but reports no separate burn result for alfalfa.

Alfalfa has high water needs and is hardy to USDA zone 3b. Its favorable ratings span field trials, laboratory testing, extension guidance, and fuel-break planting guidance. For a homeowner, the strongest conclusion is that maintained alfalfa has solid support as a fire-resistant plant, while its greenstrip use should not be mistaken for an unconditional recommendation for every spot in a home landscape.

Form
perennial
Mature height
~1.6 ft
Water need
high
Rated in
Great Basin; Great Basin / Intermountain West; Montana / Northern Rockies; New Zealand +2
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
3 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Great Basin; Great Basin / Intermountain West; Montana / Northern Rockies; New Zealand; Utah / Intermountain West; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources
  • 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.

  • Fire-Resistant Plants for Montana Landscapes (MontGuide MT200101AG) · Official scoped edition
    • MT; partial normalized coverage · 2022-04-01

      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.

  • Firewise Plants for Utah Landscapes (NR/FF/002) · Official scoped edition
    • UT; partial normalized coverage · 2005-02-01

      Utah State University Extension states that this fact sheet selects examples for Utah landscapes and that they require proper placement and maintenance. FireApproved publishes 83 exact source owners at Utah publication scope. The table is not a site-specific planting clearance.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VI, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Introduced / established
52 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Reported invasive here
3 ecological invasive reports.
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

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

52

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

52 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alaska (AK)
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • California (CA)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Hawaii (HI)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Idaho (ID)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • Montana (MT)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • North Dakota (ND)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Nevada (NV)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Oregon (OR)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Puerto Rico (PR)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Utah (UT)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Washington (WA)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • West Virginia (WV)
  • 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.

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.

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.

Recommends (6)

Same genus in the directory · the Medicago group page

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

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

Medicago sativa (Alfalfa). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/medicago-sativa/. Last verified 2026-08-23.