Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Crown vetch has one prohibited legal-list row for IN in the regulatory record. That state restriction is presented independently from the plant's fire-source entry.
The sole directional source classifies shoots of Securigera varia as very low flammability. Its exact classification remains in the evidence table, while a single fire row leaves the page limited evidence.
The two ecological reports separately mark the plant invasive in Alaska and widespread-invasive across the lower 48. Those statuses do not support the on-list result; the cited fire row remains its only directional basis in this record.
Form
perennial
Mature height
~2.6 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
New Zealand
Uses
pasture
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence
Evidence regions
New Zealand
Maintenance
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4a; no upper limit is documented.
3. Legal, ecological, and broader status
Legal-list status
1 legal-list record; the Place chip matches exact scope.
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.
Minimum 4a · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band
Exact source measurement: -28°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.
Source taxon: Securigera varia · source identifier match.
Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 82205, Temperature, Minimum (°F).
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 (1)
Low Flammability Plants directory — Fire and Emergency New Zealand (plant flammability testing at Lincoln University) · 2026 · original sourcePrimary evidenceLab-testedlineage: lincoln-nz-tree
