United States / Grow / spike muhly

spike muhly (Muhlenbergia wrightii)
Photo: no rights reserved, uploaded by Craig Martin (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

spike muhly

Muhlenbergia wrightii · Poaceae · all Muhlenbergia records

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Form
grass
Mature height
~2 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Arizona above 3,000 feet / interior Southwest
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Evidence regions
Arizona above 3,000 feet / interior Southwest
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • FIREWISE Plant Materials for 3,000 ft. and Higher Elevations (AZ1289) · Official scoped edition
    • Arizona at or above 3,000 feet (AZ footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-12-01

      AZ1289 is explicitly limited to Arizona elevations of 3,000 feet and higher. FireApproved publishes 69 exact owners as regional Arizona context, retaining every water and elevation condition. It is never promoted to statewide low-desert guidance or an independent Tier 1 vote.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AZ, CO, NM, OK, TX, UT.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CO, NM, OK, TX, UT.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

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

6

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

6 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Utah (UT)

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.

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 (1)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)

Fire-resistant grasss instead

Last verified 2026-08-24. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

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

Muhlenbergia wrightii (spike muhly). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/muhlenbergia-wrightii/. Last verified 2026-08-24.