Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Russian sage is often listed as fire resistant, but published guidance genuinely conflicts.
Across six assessments, four recommend it and two place it on the avoid side. Oregon, Washington, and Idaho extension services list it as fire resistant. FireSmart BC approves it but flags the plant as needing more research. Utah State calls it firewise when properly used and maintained, while Oregon State recommends it for Willamette Valley growing conditions.
Ohio State reaches the opposite conclusion, giving Russian sage an H on its five-band flammability scale, one step below the highest rating and within the range it advises avoiding. Its assessment also describes the shrub as drought and urban tolerant while requiring full sun and good drainage. Catalonia’s provincial government and fire service likewise advise against it. Their qualitative method weighs fire research and fuel structure alongside maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and firefighters’ experience.
These judgments do not use one common test. Some are binary regional plant lists, Ohio State relies on expert ratings, and the Catalan guide balances several garden-suitability factors. Russian sage therefore has credible support as a fire-resistant landscape plant in parts of western North America, but that label is not universal. Where a local firewise guide applies, its regional verdict and maintenance conditions should carry more weight than a broad claim that the shrub is simply fire resistant.
The UC Forest Products Laboratory says the guide covers properties of common California landscaping plants and was prepared for California fire agencies. FireApproved publishes 130 exact owners at historical California publication scope. The report is a 1997 compilation, not a current endorsement, site rating, or independent test of every row.
Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 921 is an Ohio publication that describes Ohio fire seasons and landscape conditions and labels nativity to Ohio. FireApproved publishes 352 exact source-owning plant records from its eight rated tables. This historical publication scope does not assert current extension endorsement or that a listed plant suits every Ohio site.
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.
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.
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.
Utah State University Extension states that this fact sheet selects examples for Utah landscapes and that they require proper placement and maintenance. FireApproved publishes 83 exact source owners at Utah publication scope. The table is not a site-specific planting clearance.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in ID, OR, WA.
Native range
Introduced / established
1 sourced range or established record. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
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.
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.
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.
4–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Salvia yangii · exact match.
Source location: Russian sage profile, USDA hardiness zones field.
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.
Guía de pirojardinería: not suitable inside the 25-metre maximum-risk zone [girona-2020-iuf-25m-suitability] (with its avoid rating)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Russian Sage profile (PDF page 81) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant plant profile galleries: Russian sage — Salvia yangii [osu-2023-shrubs-gallery] (with its recommendation)
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interf…: Chapter 4, Landscape Vegetation Database [ucfpl-1997] (mid-scale rating)
Firewise Plant Guide: Perennials [Sun City plant-table sections] (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.
The table rates Sage, Russian — Perovskia atriplicifolia low for flammability hazard, defined as the ease a plant can burn at high temperatures for a prolonged time.
Perovskia atriplicifolia is rated “DESACONSEJADA” by the guide's qualitative IUF garden-suitability method. The method assumes species-specific care and integrates fire evidence with fuel structure, maintenance, origin, invasiveness, and expert fire-service experience.
