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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-051
Silver Buffaloberry
Shepherdia argentea
Silver Buffaloberry is a nitrogen-fixing shrub that actually tolerates alkaline, limestone-heavy ground - a rare trait among nitrogen fixers, most of which fight calcareous soil rather than working with it. Its tart red berries, rich in vitamin C, are eaten raw or cooked, dried like currants, or turned into jelly, and they double as one of the best native winter foods for grouse and waxwings on the northern Great Plains. It suckers hard into dense, thorny thickets over 6 ft tall, so it belongs on a boundary hedge or pond-berm rather than inside a planting, and it needs a male alongside the females or there is no fruit at all.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–9
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate · Wet
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 6–8.5
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 8–12 ft
- Mature spread
- 8–12 ft
- Plant spacing
- 6–12 ft
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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