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United States / Grow / fall phlox

fall phlox (Phlox paniculata)
Photo: (c) Tom Scavo, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

fall phlox

Phlox paniculata · Polemoniaceae · all Phlox records · also called Tall garden phlox · 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.

Yes, fall phlox is rated fire resistant, with all six published assessments placing it among recommended or low-flammability plants.

The agreement spans two kinds of guidance. Extension services from Oregon State, Washington State and the University of Idaho include fall phlox on a recommended list for fire-resistant home landscapes. Washington’s Department of Natural Resources also recommends it, while Oregon State profiles tall garden phlox among perennials chosen for fire-resistant landscaping.

North Carolina reaches the same conclusion through graded flammability scales rather than simple inclusion. NC State and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rated fall phlox “Low” on a four-level scale running from Low to Extreme. NC State’s newer three-level system again places it in the low-flammability class, and its live plant database applies that tag to the species and the cultivars ‘David’ and ‘David’s Lavender.’

That consistency matters because the recommendations cover both the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina, yet use different classification systems. Fall phlox is a perennial in the Polemoniaceae family, native across broad parts of the United States and suited to USDA zones 4a through 8b according to the Pacific Northwest guidance. For a homeowner choosing among landscape perennials, the published guidance consistently supports fall phlox as a fire-resistant choice.

Form
perennial
Rated in
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; OR/WA/ID +3
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
NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); eastern WA; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Typed publication scope: 4 scopes across 4 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 Landscaping in North Carolina (AG-874) · Official scoped edition
    • NC; complete normalized coverage · 2025-03-26

      The complete three-table AG-874 plant list is explicitly for North Carolina and contains 202 low-, medium-, or high-flammability rows. FireApproved accounts for all source rows under its strict taxonomy and lineage rules; source scope does not establish local suitability at a particular North Carolina site.

  • Fire-Resistant Plants for Home Landscapes (PNW 590) · Official scoped edition
    • ID, OR, WA; partial normalized coverage · 2023-10-01

      The October 2023 joint Pacific Northwest Extension publication explicitly names Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and publishes more than 150 plant profiles. FireApproved has normalized 155 exact plant records from the source; publication scope does not assert that every listed plant suits every site within the three states.

  • Fire-Resistant Plants for Eastern Washington · Official scoped edition
    • Eastern Washington (WA footprint); partial normalized coverage

      Washington DNR publishes the guide for Eastern Washington and says it compiles plants from other Firewise documents that are likely to thrive there. FireApproved publishes 46 exact owners only as eastern Washington context. The rows are corroborative, not empirical or statewide.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NE, NH, NJ, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WV.
Introduced / established
2 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–8.

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

34

exact source areas

Current introduced

2

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

34 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Utah (UT)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Washington (WA)
  • West Virginia (WV)
2 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • New York (NY)
  • Wisconsin (WI)

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)

Corroboration (2 rows from 2 sources)

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Same genus in the directory · the Phlox group page

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

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

Phlox paniculata (Tall garden phlox). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/phlox-paniculata/. Last verified 2026-08-23.