Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.
Prairie spiderwort is rated fire resistant on limited evidence, with regional site guidance and a specific Idaho planting distance.
The name western spiderwort connects Tradescantia occidentalis to Oregon State's Willamette Valley guide. Its perennial profile describes erect, branching stems and says the plant tolerates most soils when drainage is good. That is a useful growing condition to check before choosing a bed.
New Mexico's FireWise list recommends western spiderwort in its elevation columns from 5,000 through 8,000 feet. It marks the 4,000-foot and 9,000-plus entries unknown or doubtful. The same row calls for moderate water and sun or partial sun; the uncertain endpoints are not positive recommendations.
Idaho's database assigns the species a fire-resistance score of 7. On its chart, that means a suggested minimum separation of 40 feet from a home. This gives the numerical assessment a placement meaning without turning it into a measured ignition threshold.
The Pacific Northwest guide also includes western spiderwort among its fire-resistant perennials and calls for watering, cutting back spent growth and removing dead material. Drainage, regional suitability, separation and that seasonal care belong together when comparing planting locations.
Form
perennial
Rated in
Fremont County, Wyoming; New Mexico; OR/WA/ID; Oregon (Willamette Valley) +2
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.
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.
New Mexico Forestry Division publishes this as its FireWise Plant List for New Mexico. FireApproved accounts for all 140 printed rows and publishes 95 exact same-rank owners already represented in the directory; 29 exact taxa without an existing record, 14 unresolved spellings or higher-rank matches, one compound taxon cell, and one species row whose only apparent owner has an infraspecific printed identity remain held. Every published row retains the source's Y, N, ?, or blank elevation cells. Publication scope does not erase those elevation limits or establish suitability for every New Mexico 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.
Current cited native range in AR, AZ, CO, IA, KS, LA, MN, MT, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NY, OK, SD, TX, UT, WI, WY.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness
Documented range 4–9.
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.
4–9 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated
Source taxon: Tradescantia occidentalis · exact match.
Source location: Western spiderwort 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.
Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 40' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (mid-scale rating)
Fire-resistant Landscape Plants for the Willamette Valley: Western Spiderwort profile (PDF page 101) [osu-em-9103-profile] (with its recommendation)
Fire-resistant plant profile galleries: Western spiderwort — Tradescantia occidentalis [osu-2023-perennials-gallery] (with its recommendation)
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico: PDF page 6, Flowers and Ground Covers, p6-r34 [nm-emnrd-firewise-table-row] (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 — Tradescantia occidentalis — Western Spiderwort”
Listed in the source's Ground Covers section; the page describes its listed Firewise plants as generally low-growing, low-debris, and relatively moist.
FireWise Plant List for New Mexico — New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division · 2003 Forestry Division PDF · original sourceCorroborationCompilationlineage: csu-nmsu-firewise
“FireWise Plant List for New Mexico”
Listed as Tradescantia occidentalis (Western spiderwort) in Flowers and Ground Covers. Printed elevation cells: 4,000 ft=?, 5,000 ft=Y, 6,000 ft=Y, 7,000 ft=Y, 8,000 ft=Y, 9,000+ ft=?. Water need: M; sun/shade: S/PS; mature height: 1.5’; approximate bloom: Jun- Aug.
