Roundleaf buffaloberry

Photo: Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, USA — CC BY-SA 2.0 · source

Survives zone 5 through 8

Harvest calendar

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

Starts sweet on the tongue but finishes bitter — the aftertaste comes from saponins in the skin, and it's rarely eaten fresh as a result, though historically used in small amounts for food and medicine and reportedly needs a lot of added sugar to be palatable in any quantity. Grown far more for its striking silvery, evergreen foliage than for the crop.

Hardiness

Zone 5–8

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

July–Aug

Mature size

1–2 m tall and wide

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

7.0–8.5 (neutral to strongly alkaline)

Environment

Arid, high desert

Native range

Colorado Plateau of the southwestern United States — Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico — mixed desert shrubland, pinyon-juniper woodland and ponderosa pine forest up to about 2,400 m elevation.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

3–5 yrs

Growth speed

Very slow

Spacing

200 cm (79 in) apart — about 4 m² (43 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Rounded to oval, 1–3 cm, densely silver-scaled on both surfaces, evergreen

Root system

Nitrogen-fixing via root nodules, deep and drought-adapted

Fruit description

Small round berries, red to reddish-orange, sweet at first bite with a bitter, saponin aftertaste

Propagation

Seed (needs scarification and cold stratification), or semi-hardwood cuttings in summer.

Pollination

Insect-pollinated; dioecious (separate male and female plants), so both are needed for fruit.

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.