goumi

Photo: KENPEI — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 4 through 9

Harvest calendar

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

Goumi/autumn olive — pleasantly tart-sweet when fully ripe; good for jam.

Hardiness

Zone 4–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Late summer–autumn

Mature size

Shrub 2–3 m tall and as much across; container-awkward

Light

Full sun; tolerates partial

Soil pH

5.5–8.5 (very wide; nitrogen-fixing)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

East Asia — China, Japan and Korea; hillsides, thickets and woodland margins.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

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

Spacing

250 cm (98 in) apart — about 6.3 m² (67 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, elliptic to oval, 3–7 cm long, dull green above and silver-scaly with scattered brown scales beneath.

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

Oblong red drupes 1–1.5 cm long, freckled with silver, hanging on notably long slender stalks; juicy and pleasantly tart-sweet when fully ripe — the best of the genus for eating fresh, and the reason goumi is grown deliberately rather than tolerated.

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

Partially self-fertile — a single goumi will crop, unlike autumn olive, but both fruit size and total yield improve markedly with a second, different variety nearby. Insect-pollinated, mainly by bees working the fragrant spring flowers.

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.