American silverberry

Photo: Unknown — Public domain · source

Survives zone 2 through 6

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

The least palatable fresh-eating fruit of this catalog's Elaeagnus — dry, mealy and quite astringent unless fully ripe, and not particularly enjoyable raw even then. Birds take it readily; for people it's really a cooked fruit, used in jelly and soup, or historically fried in fat.

Hardiness

Zone 2–6

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Late summer–autumn

Mature size

Suckering shrub 1–4 m; container-awkward

Light

Full sun; tolerates partial

Soil pH

5.5–8.5 (very wide; nitrogen-fixing)

Environment

Boreal

Native range

Northern North America — Alaska and Yukon east to Quebec, south through the prairie provinces to Utah, South Dakota and Minnesota; dry slopes, gravel bars and open woods.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

30–60 cm/year — fast, quickly making a dense hedge or screen.

Spacing

300 cm (118 in) apart — about 9 m² (97 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, oval to lanceolate, 2–7 cm long, and intensely silver-scaly on both faces — the most uniformly silver foliage of the genus here.

Root system

Fibrous and widely spreading laterally, and — the point that matters in a planting plan — carrying root nodules of the actinomycete Frankia, so the plant fixes its own nitrogen and feeds its neighbours. Interplanted autumn olive has been measured contributing on the order of 90 kg of nitrogen per hectare per year.

Fruit description

Egg-shaped silvery drupes about 1 cm long, dry and mealy over a large stone; edible but dull raw, and better cooked or dried than eaten out of hand.

Propagation

Seed after about 4 weeks warm stratification followed by 12 weeks cold at around 4°C. Half-ripe wood cuttings 7–10 cm with a heel in July–August, or mature current-year wood 10–12 cm with a heel in November, both in a cold frame. Suckers can be lifted where the plant throws them.

Pollination

Insect-pollinated by bees drawn to the strongly scented flowers. As with the rest of the genus, two or more plants give a far more dependable crop than one.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.