Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Missouri goldenrod is rated fire resistant on limited evidence, with favorable regional listings and a British Columbia research qualification.
Oregon State profiles Solidago missouriensis as Missouri goldenrod in its Willamette Valley plant guide. The recommendation is for fire-resistant planting suited to that region's growing conditions. It gives a gardener a locally framed choice rather than a numerical comparison of the plant's flammability with other perennials.
Fremont County uses the same scientific name with the common name smooth goldenrod. It places the plant in its Firewise ground-cover table. The county describes its Firewise selection as relatively moist, generally low-growing plants that produce little debris. These characteristics describe the selected group.
FireSmart BC also favors Missouri goldenrod but marks it as needing more research. The agreement among the regional recommendations supports the favorable assessment. When consulting Oregon and Wyoming guidance, use the scientific name to connect their different common names.
Form
perennial
Mature height
~3 ft
Water need
low
Rated in
British Columbia; Fremont County, Wyoming; Oregon (Willamette Valley)
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
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.
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.
2. Why this plant is relevant here
State distribution
Documented in AR, AZ, CO, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MD, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TN, TX, UT, WA, WI, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
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.
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 40046, 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.
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Missouri Goldenrod profile (PDF page 67) [osu-em-9103-profile] (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.
“Fremont County Firewise Plant List — Solidago missouriensis — Smooth Goldenrod”
Listed in the source's Ground Covers section; the page describes its listed Firewise plants as generally low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist.
