Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Palmer’s penstemon is rated fire resistant, and three regional sources support its use in fire-conscious planting.
Idaho Firewise ties fire-resistance scores to minimum planting distances; Palmer’s penstemon scores 8 of 10. CSU’s published use of that scale places 8–10 in the recommended band. The University of Nevada Cooperative Extension also includes Palmer’s penstemon among perennial plants used in northern Nevada greenstrips, where planting and maintenance are intended to help manage wildfire. These findings approach the question differently, but both favor the plant.
New Mexico’s Forestry Division includes it on its FireWise plant list for flowers and ground covers. The source recommends it at elevations of 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000 feet; suitability is unknown or doubtful at 7,000 feet, and it is not recommended at 8,000 feet or 9,000 feet and above. Those limits concern where the plant is suited, not a reversal of its fire rating.
Palmer’s penstemon is a low-water perennial that reaches about 3.5 feet and is hardy to USDA zone 6a. It is native to the Southwest and south-central United States. The practical conclusion is favorable: its direct score and regional listings support treating it as fire resistant where local elevation and growing conditions fit.
Form
perennial
Mature height
~3.5 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
New Mexico; Northern Nevada / Great Basin; southern Idaho / Intermountain
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
New Mexico Forestry Division publishes this as its FireWise Plant List for New Mexico. FireApproved accounts for all 140 printed rows and publishes 95 exact same-rank owners already represented in the directory; 29 exact taxa without an existing record, 14 unresolved spellings or higher-rank matches, one compound taxon cell, and one species row whose only apparent owner has an infraspecific printed identity remain held. Every published row retains the source's Y, N, ?, or blank elevation cells. Publication scope does not erase those elevation limits or establish suitability for every New Mexico site.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AZ, CA, CO, ID, NM, NV, UT, WA, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in AZ, CA, NM, NV, UT.
Introduced / established
4 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 6a; 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 52185, 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.
Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 30' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (with its recommendation)
Greenstrips: Another Tool to Manage Wildfire: common perennial plant used in a maintained northern Nevada greenstrip [unr-fs-97-36-greenstrip] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 6, Flowers and Ground Covers, p6-r13 [nm-emnrd-firewise-table-row] (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.
“Common perennial plants used in greenstrips and selected characteristics important to their establishment and use”
Table 1 row: Palmer penstemon (Penstemon Palmeri). Minimum yearly precipitation: 8-10 inches; salt or alkali tolerance: Low; status: N; growth form, flower color, or season: Light Pink Sp, S; varieties: none printed. The fact sheet says greenstrips should be grazed or mown frequently enough to reduce fuel buildup; otherwise their effectiveness is reduced dramatically.
Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original sourceCorroborationCompilationlineage: csu-nmsu-firewise
“FireWise Plant List for New Mexico”
Listed as Penstemon palmeri (Palmer penstemon) in Flowers and Ground Covers. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=Y, 5,000 ft=Y, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=?, 8,000 ft=N, 9,000+ ft=N. Water need: VL-L; sun/shade: S/PS; mature height: 2-4’; approximate bloom: Jun.
