With this being the first week of autumn, it seems appropriate to talk about an autumn fruit. Not the iconic New England apple, but rather an invasive small tree with the common name "autumn olive" due to the time of year it ripens.
I worry about over-foraging native plants because we are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. By foraging for food we don’t really need to survive, we might be decreasing the chance that native plants like chokecherries or sweet fern have of surviving. We might also be robbing local wildlife of food. Autumn olive, on the other hand, should be foraged as much as possible! And the great thing is that it is a really nutritious and delicious wild edible berry.
What is autumn olive, and where does it come from?
Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) is native to eastern Asia and was first introduced to the United States in 1830 as an ornamental plant. It was used to help control erosion along highways, for screening and windbreaks, to improve soil, and to provide habitat for wildlife (despite warnings about the negative impact this species has on native species). It is now common in the eastern United States and might even be the most common wild edible fruit around here.
If you don’t know where to find autumn olives, start looking because they are everywhere. You want to look for a thicket-forming bush, usually along roadsides (that’s where they are at my house). The leaves are elliptical with distinct silver scales on their undersides. Right now, autumn olives have pea-sized berries that are ripening to a bright red coated with silver or brownish dots. One of my bushes was loaded with berries a week or so ago. Before I could get around to harvesting, the birds had. However, there are more lining my road, still with berries waiting to be picked.
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Why harvest autumn olives?
Why harvest autumn olives? There are so many reasons. My most selfish reason is that they are easy to harvest, prolific (a single autumn olive bush can yield several pounds of fruit), and have a delicious, sweet cherry-like flavor.
They are also nutritious, high in vitamins A, E and C, and contain more lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, than tomatoes! The fruit and seeds are both edible. I have made jam, syrup, and even fruit leather without bothering to strain out the seeds. Try them raw, they really do taste great.
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Another reason to harvest as many autumn olive berries as possible is to help halt their spread. Autumn olives tend to colonize areas with poor soil. They are one of the few non-leguminous (bean family) nitrogen fixers. This means they can grow in nitrogen-poor soil because their roots work with bacteria to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into nitrates, one of the main ingredients in most fertilizers. This can be a good thing in that it enriches the soil– most plants can’t fix nitrogen. But, autumn olives tend to outcompete most native plants, forming a monoculture that excludes native species. Monocultures (strips of just autumn olives) are the opposite of biodiverse.
On my property, I plan to cut down or pull out all traces of autumn olive next spring or early summer, before they have fruit. I’ve waited too long to cut them down this year. Cutting after the fruit has set most likely increases the risk of seeds spreading and germinating.
I definitely plan on visiting my local orchards to pick apples soon. This is a yearly ritual, my welcome to autumn ritual, that I don’t want to miss. But I’m going to add autumn olive picking to my fall line-up. This gives me an excuse to get out and explore, and this is one wild fruit I have no hesitation about over-harvesting.
Susan Pike, a researcher and an environmental sciences and biology teacher at Dover High School, welcomes your ideas for future column topics. Send your photos and observations to spike3116@gmail.com. Read more of her Nature News columns online atSeacoastonline.comand pikes-hikes.com, and follow her on Instagram @pikeshikes.
