Plant · P-046

Sea Buckthorn

Hippophae rhamnoides

Sea Buckthorn is a nitrogen-fixing shrub whose tart orange berries carry about 120 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, sharp enough that they are usually left for a frost or cooked into juice rather than eaten raw. The leaves run up to 20 percent protein and have long been fed to livestock and even racehorses - the genus name literally translates to shining horse. It is dioecious, so roughly one male plant is needed for every six females to get any fruit at all, and it wants free-draining sandy or gravelly ground; it struggles badly wherever summers turn hot and humid, even inside a nominally suitable winter-cold zone.