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Muhley grass

Muhlenbergia spp. (accepted: Muhlenbergia) · Poaceae · all Muhlenbergia records

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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: Highly flammable — 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: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: South Carolina; eastern US
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source

Landscaping Can Be Attractive & FIREWISE (Fire Smart Plant List for SC) · Official scoped edition
- SC; partial normalized coverage
  South Carolina Forestry Commission publishes this explicitly as its Fire Smart Plant List for South Carolina. FireApproved publishes 63 exact genus owners from 72 unique common-name labels; unsafe common-name mappings and duplicates are not broadened. The brochure calls the list non-inclusive and does not establish species-level or site-specific suitability.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

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.

Muhley grass (Muhlenbergia spp.) — Photo: (c) Sue Carnahan, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: grass
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable source rows; no primary zone projected
Mature height: ~8 ft
Light: Full sun
Grows in: DC, DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA, WV
Rated in: South Carolina; eastern US
Family: Poaceae
Evidence: 2 cited sources

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record muhlenbergia-spp · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 5 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Muhlenbergia spp. · exact match.

Source location: Cold Hardiness Zone field in the recovered selector record.

Not used for comparison: The recovered selector prints one Cold Hardiness Zone value but does not define it as a minimum threshold or a one-zone range.

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.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector: Landscape Zone 4 — beyond 30 ft; outside the selector's recommendation area [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (with its avoid rating)
Landscaping Can Be Attractive & FIREWISE: SHRUBS [SCFC Fire Smart plant-form sections] (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)

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector — USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF + state Firewise programs (WV, OH, PA, DE, DC, MD, NJ) · 2016-wayback · original source Primary evidence Keyed curation lineage: ufifas-srs-tree

“NOT Firewise (4)”

Medium size clump landscape grass. Fine texture.

Fire-resistant grasss instead

Fescue, Tall
Festuca arundinacea

Whitegrass
Leersia virginica

Tall fescue
Lolium arundinaceum

Bottlebrush sedge
Carex comosa

Fox sedge
Carex vulpinoidea

Woolgrass bulrush
Scirpus cyperinus

Fire-resistant grasss listed above

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

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

Muhlenbergia spp. (Muhley grass). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/muhlenbergia-spp/. Last verified 2026-08-23.