Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Russian wildrye is rated fire resistant, but only for its documented use in managed Great Basin greenstrips.
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service includes Russian wildrye among common greenstrip plants for areas receiving 8 to 12 inches of precipitation, on fine or medium soils. University of Nevada Cooperative Extension also includes it for northern Nevada greenstrips with at least 10 to 12 inches of yearly precipitation, and says those plantings should be grazed or mown. Together, these expert recommendations support its fire-resistant rating in that specific role.
That is narrower than an unconditional recommendation for planting around a home. Russian wildrye is a low-water grass that reaches about three feet at maturity and is hardy to USDA zone 3a, but its greenstrip use depends on climate, soil and maintenance. It has also been flagged as invasive in two jurisdictions, so local restrictions deserve checking before planting. The practical conclusion is that Russian wildrye can be a fire-resistant greenstrip choice where the documented growing and management conditions fit.
Form
grass
Mature height
~3 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
Great Basin; Northern Nevada / Great Basin
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Documented in AK, AZ, CO, MN, MT, ND, NE, NM, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3a; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
2 ecological invasive reports.
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 location: PlantCharacteristics record 25152, 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.
Fuel Breaks to Reduce Large Wildfire Impacts in Sagebrush…: common plant material option for a managed greenstrip in sagebrush ecosystems [nrcs-tn66-greenstrip] (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)
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.