The winner: Coreopsis, 97/100. Runner-up: Globe Thistle at 87.
Horses graze what grows on the fence line, so this list admits only species ASPCA explicitly clears for horses: then ranks them like pasture plants: tough, perennial and on their own.
The picks
The flowers that won
The top score, plus the qualifier that asks least of you.
Lives on pasture terms: both: clay soil, drought, heat, humidity, poor soil, salt, sandy dry soil, shallow rocky · Comes back without replanting: perennial · Cold it is proven to survive: 3 to 9
Flaws, not dealbreakers:no vase data in the postharvest literature
Lives on pasture terms: both: drought, poor soil, sandy dry soil, shallow rocky · Comes back without replanting: perennial · Cold it is proven to survive: 3 to 8
Flaws, not dealbreakers:no vase data in the postharvest literature
4 rules, 100 points, no opinions. Every line reads one field of the table.
Lives on pasture terms30 pointsshrugs off both drought and poor soil 30; drought only 23; poor soil only 15; neither documented 7; no data 12 Read from: stress tolerances.
Comes back without replanting20 pointsperennial 20; shrub 16; bulb 12; annual you must resow 8 Read from: whether it returns on its own.
Cold it is proven to survive25 pointsproven to zone 3 25; zone 4 20; zone 5 14; milder only 7 Read from: the zones it survives.
Color along the fence25 pointseight or more months 25; six to seven 22; four to five 19; three 12; two 6; one 3; no bloom data 6 Read from: the months it is in bloom.
Not ranked here: never evaluated as non-toxic to horses by ASPCA: safety cannot be assumed.
The full method ↗
The leaderboard
The top ten
The 10 highest of 23 that qualified. Tap any score to open the lines behind it.
Not qualifying is a verdict too: the table simply says this question is not theirs.
never evaluated as non-toxic to horses by ASPCA: safety cannot be assumed (statusTulips, Peonies, Hydrangea macrophylla and 59 more
The winner's badge
Generated by the ranking above, and re-scored whenever the table changes.
Coreopsis
The badge is generated by this ranking, not awarded by hand. When the
table changes, it re-scores itself.
How we rank
We keep one table of 85 flowers,
with 25 documented facts each, drawn from university and extension sources. Every ranking is
a published formula worth 100 points; tap any score and it unfolds into the lines that made
it. A flower that does not fit the question is not scored lower: it is excluded, and the reason is
shown. When the table changes, every score and stamp updates itself.
The full method ↗
