Also known as Japanese silverberry and oleaster, autumn olive is a rapidly growing deciduous shrub or small tree belonging to the oleaster family, Eleagnaceae, that also includes buckthorn and buffalo berry. It is native to China, Japan, and Korea but was introduced into the US from Japan in 1830 as an ornamental and was also used for erosion control and wildlife food and cover. Plants have naturalized and can be found in disturbed areas including meadows, fields, thickets, forest margins, and roadsides, and are considered invasive from Maine to Michigan and Nebraska, south to Florida and Louisiana. A nitrogen fixing plant, autumn olive prefers full sun to partial shade, tolerates lean soil, and is somewhat drought tolerant once established. Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Description: Growing 10-16’ tall, autumn olive is somewhat sprawling, and has exfoliating bark, and silver or brown thorns on the branches and trunk. The leathery elliptical leaves are 2-3” long and grayish green with silver scales on the underside. The pale yellow to white fragrant flowers are funnel-shape, 1/3” long, and appear in drooping clusters of 1-4 from late spring to early summer. The fleshy fruits are edible, red in the fall, and attractive to birds that spread them to distant sites. Reproduction is by suckering and seed.
Control: Autumn is very difficult to control without the use of herbicides. The best control is a combination of hand weeding of small plants when they first emerge followed by cutting large plants as low as possible and applying a glyphosate herbicide such as Round Up. This is best done in the growing season from mid summer to fall. Burning, cutting, or girdling are not effective and may actually encourage more vigorous growth unless followed by herbicide application.