FireApproved

United States / Grow / orange coneflower

orange coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida)
Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

orange coneflower

Rudbeckia fulgida · Asteraceae · all Rudbeckia records · also called Black-eyed Susan · Wikipedia

View Saved

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.

Orange coneflower is rated fire resistant on limited evidence, with regional endorsements and lower Idaho scores for named forms.

The Pacific Northwest extension guide includes Rudbeckia fulgida under black-eyed Susan. FireSmart BC calls the species brown-eyed Susan and assigns it to the extended zone. The different common names make the scientific name useful when matching a plant to either recommendation.

Idaho's database adds a qualification to those favorable lists. It gives several named forms of Rudbeckia fulgida a fire-resistance score of seven. On the database's placement chart, that score corresponds to a suggested minimum distance of forty feet from a home. The distance belongs to Idaho's scoring guidance for those assessed forms.

Sun City Texas lists Rudbeckia fulgida variety sullivantii with low flammability. That is another favorable finding with a stated botanical scope. Taken together, the recommendations support orange coneflower as a fire-resistant option while keeping the Idaho placement advice and the particular forms assessed in view. The Northwest guide pairs its selections with watering, pruning, and cleanup of dead or spent growth.

Form
perennial
Rated in
British Columbia; Georgetown, Texas; NC; North Carolina +5
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; Georgetown, Texas; NC; North Carolina; North Carolina / southeastern US; OR/WA/ID; Pacific Northwest (Oregon / Washington / Idaho); eastern WA; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Typed publication scope: 5 scopes across 5 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.

  • Firewise Plant Guide · Official scoped edition
    • Sun City Texas, Georgetown (TX footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-14

      The guide is authored for the Sun City Texas community in Georgetown. FireApproved publishes 142 exact owners only as community-level context. It is an archived HOA exhibit with unknown rating lineage, not a current statewide Texas source or an independent Tier 1 determination.

  • 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, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WI, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MD, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, VA, WV.
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–9.

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

16

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

16 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • West Virginia (WV)

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 (5)

Corroboration (3 rows from 3 sources)

Mid-scale / conditional (4)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
Same genus in the directory · the Rudbeckia group page

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

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

Rudbeckia fulgida (Black-eyed Susan). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/rudbeckia-fulgida/. Last verified 2026-08-23.