Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Muhly’s fire ratings conflict, but its highly flammable classification calls for keeping it away from structures.
The USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF and state Firewise programs rate muhly “Not Firewise,” the fourth and least favorable band on their four-band scale. They describe it as a medium-sized, fine-textured clumping landscape grass. The South Carolina Forestry Commission reaches the opposite conclusion, placing Muhlenbergia among less flammable plants with some fire resistance.
The two sources use different rating systems. The eastern US source assigns one of four Firewise ratings, ranging from Firewise to Not Firewise. South Carolina uses broader categories that distinguish highly flammable plants, which ignite faster and burn readily, from less flammable plants with some resistance. One system’s least favorable rating therefore sits beside the other system’s favorable category, without a shared scale to resolve the conflict.
Muhly is hardy to USDA zone 5a and grows in full sun. This grass in the Poaceae family reaches about eight feet at maturity. Because the unfavorable finding places it at the bottom of a defined four-band Firewise scale, the safer conclusion near a house is not to rely on the favorable South Carolina category. Its placement should reflect the highly flammable classification and the advice to keep it away from structures.
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
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.
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.
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.
