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Canada Bluegrass

Poa compressa · Poaceae · all Poa records

Your local evidence lens

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: Fire-resistant — 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: Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Global; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 2 scopes across 2 cited fire sources

Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants (Fact Sheet 6.305) · Official scoped edition
- CO; partial normalized coverage · 2025-07-01
  Colorado State University Extension and the Colorado State Forest Service publish Fact Sheet 6.305 for Colorado's WUI and varied ecosystems. FireApproved exposes all 114 exact source owners at Colorado publication scope while retaining score, elevation, water, and Idaho-carrier lineage. Publication scope is not suitability for every Colorado site or zone.
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.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: 50 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: Documented minimum 3a; no upper limit is documented.

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: 2 ecological invasive reports; set a location to distinguish exact from regional context.
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.

Canada Bluegrass (Poa compressa) — Photo: (c) Matt Lavin, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: grass
USDA hardiness: Minimum 3a; upper limit not documented
Mature height: ~2 ft
Water need: moderate
Grows in: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC +42
Rated in: Colorado / Rocky Mountain Front Range; Global; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Family: Poaceae
Evidence: 11 cited sources

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

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

50

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

50 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alaska (AK)
Alabama (AL)
Arkansas (AR)
Arizona (AZ)
California (CA)
Colorado (CO)
Connecticut (CT)
District of Columbia (DC)
Delaware (DE)
Georgia (GA)
Hawaii (HI)
Iowa (IA)
Idaho (ID)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Louisiana (LA)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Maine (ME)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Mississippi (MS)
Montana (MT)
North Carolina (NC)
North Dakota (ND)
Nebraska (NE)
New Hampshire (NH)
New Jersey (NJ)
New Mexico (NM)
Nevada (NV)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Oregon (OR)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Rhode I. (RI)
South Carolina (SC)
South Dakota (SD)
Tennessee (TN)
Texas (TX)
Utah (UT)
Virginia (VA)
Vermont (VT)
Washington (WA)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)
Wyoming (WY)

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.

USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record POCO · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 3a · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -38°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Poa compressa · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 24909, 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 20' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (with its recommendation)
Ignition-Resistant Landscape Plants: suitable for defensible-space zones 1-2 (score 8+) [CSU defensible-space zone] (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.

Listed without a rating (9)

FLAMITS: FLAMmability plant traiTS database — Dryad / Global Ecology and Biogeography · Dryad version 9 · original source Corroboration Trait database lineage: meta-aggregator

9 cited rows from this source; its identity, lineage and tier are stated once.
- “calorific value (kcal/kg): 4632.65” · score 4632.65 (FLAMITS — calorific value (kcal/kg))
  
  FLAMITS record 4999; Combustibility measurement; plant part stems; fuel live; predrying yes; device calorimeter; site Hogenbirk1995-1; sampling june. Primary study Hogenbirk1995: Hogenbirk, J.C., & Sarrazin-Delay, C.L. (1995). Using fuel characteristics to estimate plant ignitability for fire hazard reduction. Water Air Soil Pollut, 82, 161170.
- “time to flaming (s): 1.98” · score 1.98 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15989; Ignitability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flaming duration (s): 20.888” · score 20.888 (FLAMITS — flaming duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15990; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “smouldering duration (s): 56.694” · score 56.694 (FLAMITS — smouldering duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15991; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flame height (cm): 17.8” · score 17.8 (FLAMITS — flame height (cm))
  
  FLAMITS record 15992; Combustibility measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “time to flaming (s): 1.322” · score 1.322 (FLAMITS — time to flaming (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15993; Ignitability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flaming duration (s): 13.148” · score 13.148 (FLAMITS — flaming duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15994; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “smouldering duration (s): 62.796” · score 62.796 (FLAMITS — smouldering duration (s))
  
  FLAMITS record 15995; Sustainability measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.
- “flame height (cm): 25.4” · score 25.4 (FLAMITS — flame height (cm))
  
  FLAMITS record 15996; Combustibility measurement; plant part whole plant; fuel live; predrying no; device burning bench; site Gao2022-1; sampling spring 2019. Primary study Gao2022: Gao, X., & Schwilk, D. W. (2022). Burn hot or tolerate trees: flammability decreases with shade tolerance in grasses. Oikos, 4, e08930.

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

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

Poa compressa (Canada Bluegrass). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/poa-compressa/. Last verified 2026-08-23.