autumn olive

Photo: KENPEI — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

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 3–8

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Late summer–autumn

Mature size

Suckering shrub 3–5 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, Korea and the Himalaya. ⚠ Now widely naturalised and seriously invasive across much of eastern North America.

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

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

Leaf shape

Alternate, elliptic, 4–8 cm long with a distinctly wavy margin; silvery on both faces as it opens in spring, the upper surface turning green as the scales wear off through summer — the change that separates it from Russian olive.

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

Round drupes 6–9 mm across, ripening red and speckled with silver or brown scales, borne in enormous quantity; juicy, tart-sweet and pleasant, and exceptionally high in lycopene — but also exactly why birds spread it so effectively.

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

⚠ Self-incompatible and mostly outcrossing — a 2021 reproductive-biology study found the low fruit set on lone open-pollinated branches inconsistent with self-fertility, correcting older sources that call it self-fertile. Plant two or more genetically distinct bushes. Insect-pollinated, and the scented flowers are heavily worked by bees.

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.