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Autumn Olive

Elaeagnus umbellata

Plant: Tardily deciduous, bushy shrub often with thorny branches, 3-16 ft (1-5 m) tall, leafy, leaves silvery scaly beneath, many red berries in fall. Occurs in open forests and on forest edges, and widely planted on surface mines.

Stem: Twigs slender and silver scaly, spur twigs common, with some lateral branches becoming pointed like thorns, branches and main stems glossy olive drab with scattered thorns and many whitish dots, becoming light gray to gray-brown with age, splitting, and becoming fissured exposing light brown inner bark.

Leaves: Alternate, elliptic, 2-3 in (5-8 cm) long and 0.8-1.2 in (2-3 cm) wide, petioles short and silvery, margins entire and wavy, bright green to gray-green above with silver scaly midvein and densely silver scaly beneath.

Flowers: Feb-Jun. Axillary clusters, 5-10 flowers, fragrant, tubular with 4 lobes, silvery-white to yellow.

Fruit and seeds: Aug-Oct. Round drupe, 0.3-0.4 in (7-10 mm) wide and long, red and finely doted with silvery to silvery-brown scales, juicy, containing 1 nutlet, ellipsoid.

Ecology: Spread by animal-dispersed seeds and found as scattered plants in forest openings and open forests. Prefers drier sites. Often planted in reclamation areas and

April (J. Miller)

April (J. Miller)
as wildlife food plantings, forming stands. Non-leguminous nitrogen fixer.

Resembles silverthorn or thorny olive (Elaeagnus pungens) and Russian olive (E. angustifolia). Silverthorn is evergreen with brown scaly and hairy twigs, flowers in late fall producing few reddish-silver scaly drupes in spring. Russian olive with silver scaly twigs and both leaf surfaces and flowers early summer producing many yellow olives in fall and winter. Minnie bush (Menziesia pilosa), a southern Appalachian native at high elevations, is somewhat similar but has glands, not scales, on the midvein.

Exotic Pest Plant Control Recommendations

Bayer International Code - ELUM
FIA Code - 2038

October (J. Miller) April (J. Miller)


April (J. Miller) May (J. Miller)


December (J. Miller) December (J. Miller)

* USDA, NRCS. 2001. The PLANTS Database, Version 3.1 (http://plants.usda.gov). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA. February 5, 2002.
States with suspected
infestations are shown in red.*
line
USDA Forest ServiceUSDA APHIS PPQ The Bugwood Network University of Georgia Invasive.org is a joint project of
The Bugwood Network, USDA Forest Service & USDA APHIS PPQ.
The University of Georgia - Warnell School of Forest Resources and
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Dept. of Entomology
Last updated on Sunday, August 10, 2003 at 11:11 PM
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