Russian olive tree: Born to spread

Tree or shrub, take your pick, I have heard it called both by professionals who know what they are talking about. Either way, it displaces native vegetation like willow, native grasses, shrubs and flowers.

“Invasive Plants and Weeds of National Forests and Grasslands of the Southwestern Region” by Mitchel R. White, ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, describes Russian olive as a deciduous, usually thorny, shrub or small tree up to 35 feet tall. The stems, buds, and leaves have a dense covering of silvery to rusty scales, and at 3 years of age the plants begin to produce highly fragrant clusters of yellow flowers.

In the early summer the flowers produce clusters of edible, sweet fruits similar to a cherry-like drupe of fruits that are relished by a multitude of birds and other wildlife. The shrub can “fix” nitrogen in its roots, enabling it to grow on bare mineral soils.

The Russian olive is native to western and central Asia, Afghanistan, southern Russia and Kazakhstan, to Turkey and Iran. So how in the world did it make it to the United States? Well, the plant is now widely grown all across southern and central Europe as a drought-resistant plant for its scented flowers, edible fruits, attractive yellow foliage, and black bark.

So it was introduced into North America in the late 19th century and subsequently escaped cultivation; and since the seeds are relished by birds, the plant quickly spread like wildfire.

Russian olive is considered to be an invasive species in many places in the U.S. because it thrives on poor soil, has low seedling mortality rates, matures in a few years, and out-competes native wild vegetation. The plant often invades riparian (water-loving) habitats where over-story cottonwoods have died.

I found this plant in “Plants of The Rocky Mountains,” by Kershaw, MacKinnon and Pojar, named silverberry or wolf willow describing not only the sweet, heavy perfume of the flowers but the stench of the silverberry wood that is put on a campfire.

Several American Indian tribes used the bark of this tree to make cord and the nutlets inside the berries as decorative beads after they were threaded, dried, oiled, and polished.