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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-042
Autumn Olive
Elaeagnus umbellata
Autumn Olive is a nitrogen-fixing shrub that partners with soil bacteria to feed itself and boost the fruit trees planted nearby. It carries heavy crops of small tart, lycopene-rich berries good raw or cooked into jam, along with an edible seed. The surprise is how far it travels on its own: birds strip the berries and carry the seed well past where it was planted, so it needs siting inside grazed or mowed ground, where the seedlings that come up each year get eaten or cut before they take hold.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–9
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 5.5–8
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 10–16 ft
- Mature spread
- 20–30 ft
- Plant spacing
- 6–8 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-deep
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Alloberberis trifoliolata
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Aji Amarillo
Capsicum baccatum
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American Beautyberry
Callicarpa americana
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American Black Currant
Ribes americanum
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American Elderberry
Sambucus canadensis
American Elderberry gives two harvests a year - creamy flower clusters in June for cordial, fritters and tea, and purple-black berries in…
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American Hazelnut
Corylus americana
American Hazelnut is a thicket-forming shrub that bears small, thick-shelled nuts good raw or cooked, and it pollinates itself, so a single…
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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