United States / Grow / Johnsongrass

Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense)
Photo: no rights reserved (CC0), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Johnsongrass

Sorghum halepense · Poaceae · 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.

Sorghum halepense has four CO, UT, WA, and NV rows on the legal-list. Those jurisdiction-specific records lead the johnsongrass profile.

The seed list contains twenty-three entries, while two ecological invasive reports occupy a separate status channel. Those totals do not become fire evidence merely because they belong to the same species record.

An avoid recommendation appears in the evidence table, whose source set remains limited evidence. That depth is not supplemented by the two climate assertions available in hardiness evidence.

Same-form alternatives appear under related plants. They provide a direct comparison route without inheriting the four legal rows, twenty-three seed entries, two ecological reports, or avoid conclusion documented for johnsongrass.

Fire-resistant grasss instead

Form
grass
Mature height
~6 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
high
Rated in
eastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Highly flammable — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
eastern US

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, MI, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Introduced / established
49 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 5b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
4 legal-list records; the Place chip matches exact scope.
Seed-list status
23 state noxious-weed seed records; the Place chip matches exact scope.
Reported invasive here
2 ecological invasive reports.
Plant-specific legal-list reviews (1)

These source-bound review receipts are separate from ecological invasive reports. A source or plant identity change invalidates a receipt.

Plant-specific state seed-list reviews (4)

These source-bound receipts answer only the July 2026 state noxious-weed seed-list question.

This answers only whether the plant identity appears in the July 2026 state noxious-weed seed sheet. It does not establish non-seed plant legal status, ecological-invasive status, nursery-sale rules, or unrestricted use.

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

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

49

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

49 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • California (CA)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Hawaii (HI)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Idaho (ID)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • Montana (MT)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • North Dakota (ND)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Nevada (NV)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • Oregon (OR)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Puerto Rico (PR)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Utah (UT)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Washington (WA)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • West Virginia (WV)
  • Wyoming (WY)

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.

Avoids (1)

Fire-resistant grasss instead

Fire-resistant grasss listed above

Guides that discuss this plant

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

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

Sorghum halepense (Johnsongrass). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/sorghum-halepense/. Last verified 2026-08-23.