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United States / Grow / upright prairie coneflower

upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera)
Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

upright prairie coneflower

Ratibida columnifera · Asteraceae · also called Prairie coneflower · 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.

Upright prairie coneflower is rated fire resistant on limited evidence, with recommendations from several regional planting guides.

Oregon State's Willamette Valley publication profiles Ratibida columnifera under both prairie coneflower and Mexican hat. Those names lead to the same scientific entry in a guide selected for the valley's growing conditions. The Pacific Northwest extension guide includes the species as prairie coneflower as well, giving gardeners another regional reference for this choice.

FireSmart BC's chart also uses the paired names Mexican Hat / Prairie Coneflower. It places the plant in the extended zone. That placement is a useful part of the recommendation: finding a species on a favorable list does not make every position around a house equivalent.

Fremont County includes Ratibida columnifera in its Firewise ground-cover section and emphasizes plant choice, spacing, and maintenance. These guides agree on its value in a fire-resistant planting, with placement and maintenance still part of that choice. Match the scientific name when comparing the different common names, then retain the placement and upkeep advice attached to the regional recommendation.

Form
perennial
Mature height
~3.1 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
British Columbia; Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico; OR/WA/ID +4
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
5 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
British Columbia; Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico; OR/WA/ID; Oregon (Willamette Valley); Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); eastern WA; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Typed publication scope: 6 scopes across 6 cited fire sources
  • Fremont County Firewise Plant List · Official scoped edition
    • Fremont County (WY footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2011-02-25

      The source identifies itself as the Fremont County Firewise Plant List. FireApproved publishes its 92 exact source owners as Fremont County regional context. No methodology, current county endorsement, statewide Wyoming scope, or site-specific suitability is inferred.

  • 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.

  • FireWise Plant List for New Mexico · Official scoped edition
    • NM; partial normalized coverage · 2003-10-08

      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.

  • Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley (EM 9103) · Official scoped edition
    • Willamette Valley (OR footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-02-01

      OSU Extension says EM 9103 highlights fire-resistant plants that thrive under Willamette Valley growing conditions. FireApproved publishes 172 exact owners only as valley context. The guide shares the PNW 590 lineage and is not a second independent vote or statewide site clearance.

  • 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, AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, LA, MA, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Native range
Current cited native range in AR, AZ, CO, IA, IL, IN, KS, LA, MA, MN, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NM, OK, SD, TN, TX, UT, WI, WY.
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
3 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

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

24

exact source areas

Current introduced

1

exact source area

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

24 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Montana (MT)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • North Dakota (ND)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Utah (UT)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • Wyoming (WY)
1 introduced source area · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • New York (NY)

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 (7)

Corroboration (4 rows from 4 sources)

  • Fire-Resistant Plants for Eastern Washington — Washington State Department of Natural Resources · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: unknown

    “listed fire-resistant” · original source

  • FireSmart BC Plant Program — fire-resistant plant chart — FireSmart BC · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: pnw590-tree resolves to Fire-Resistant Plants for Home Landscapes (PNW 590)

    “FireSmart-approved fire-resistant plant”

  • Fremont County Firewise Plant List — Fremont County Firewise · web page (server last-modified 2011-02-25) · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: unknown

    “Fremont County Firewise Plant List — Ratibida columnifera — Prairie Coneflower”

    Listed in the source's Ground Covers section; the page describes its listed Firewise plants as generally low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist.

  • FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original source Corroboration Compilation lineage: csu-nmsu-firewise

    “FireWise Plant List for New Mexico”

    Listed as Ratibida columnifera (Prairie coneflower) in Flowers and Ground Covers. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=Y, 5,000 ft=Y, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=Y, 8,000 ft=Y, 9,000+ ft=Y. Water need: L-M; sun/shade: S; mature height: 2’; approximate bloom: Jul-Sep.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

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

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

Ratibida columnifera (Prairie coneflower). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/ratibida-columnifera/. Last verified 2026-08-23.