Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Yes, mother of thyme is rated fire resistant by six fire-safety and extension sources.
Oregon State, Washington State, and the University of Idaho jointly list it as fire resistant, as does Washington’s Department of Natural Resources. Fire Safe Marin, Nevada’s Cooperative Extension, Montana State, and Michigan State reach the same practical conclusion.
These are list-based recommendations rather than scores from one shared laboratory test. Their agreement is still meaningful because it spans several climates and institutions. Montana State lists the subspecies Thymus praecox ssp. britannicus among fire-resistant plants adapted to Montana. Michigan State considers mother of thyme wildfire resistant and recommends it for Michigan’s climate. Nevada includes it because at least two of the western references used in its compilation reported it favorably.
Mother of thyme is a groundcover in the mint family, but its rating does not remove the need for good firescaping. Even with fire-resistant plants, Fire Safe Marin calls for irrigation and removal of dead material, along with appropriate placement and spacing. The sensible conclusion is that mother of thyme is a supported fire-resistant choice, provided it is maintained and situated with those precautions in mind.
Form
groundcover
Rated in
California; Marin County, California; Michigan / Great Lakes; Montana / Northern Rockies +6
On this lot
1. Fire evidence and conditions
Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
The guide presents itself as fire performance ratings for common landscape plants in a fire-prone California setting. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as republished California context. It is not an independent rating, a current endorsement, or parcel suitability.
Marin County (CA footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2019-01-01
The publication is explicitly limited to plants common to Marin County. FireApproved publishes 104 exact owners as Marin regional context while retaining its placement, spacing, irrigation, and maintenance boundary. It is not statewide California guidance or parcel suitability.
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.
Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.
The April 2022 MontGuide explicitly presents fire-resistant species adapted to Montana. FireApproved publishes 92 exact plant records from the source while retaining excluded genus, family, and unresolved rows; the guide itself says not every listed species grows in every part of the state.
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.
University of Nevada Cooperative Extension compiled plants suited to Nevada climate zones and reported favorably by at least two upstream firewise lists. FireApproved publishes 126 exact source owners at Nevada publication scope. The source explicitly makes no independent flammability determination, so these rows remain corroborative.
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 GA, ID, IL, IN, MA, MD, MI, MN, MS, MT, NC, NH, NJ, OH, OR, RI, TN, UT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Native range
Introduced / established
2 sourced range or established records. 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.
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 Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 50' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes: Oregon [osu-frn6-oregon-regions] (with its recommendation)
Fire Performance of Common Plants: Table 1 (favorable in 3 or more references) [diablo-guide-to-plants-three-reference-vote] (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.
“Fire-Resistant Plant Materials for Oregon”
· condition: green
Thymus praecox (Creeping or woolly thyme) is listed under “Groundcovers 18 inches and lower”. The guide says most listed plants require some irrigation during Oregon's dry summer months and must be maintained in a healthy condition.
Fire Performance of Common Plants (Guide to Plants) — Diablo Firesafe Council · live page captured 2026-08-29 · original sourceCorroborationMirrorlineage: ucfpl-berkeley resolves to Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants
“Table 1: favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references (refs 9,10,23,36,40,41)”
The Diablo Firesafe Council Guide to Plants lists Thymus praecox articus (Mother of thyme, Creeping thyme) as shrub, perennial, in Table 1: plants with a favorable fire performance rating in 3 or more references. The guide cites 6 of its 57 numbered references for this row (9,10,23,36,40,41). The guide states the ranking terms in its underlying references were mostly undefined and makes no attempt to rank within the list, and that fire performance is compromised without maintenance.
