Autumn-olive is native to China, Korea, and Japan and I wish it would have been left there because it is such an invasive plant in much of the US in the Midwest, the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast. It does have pretty foliage that is dark green above and silvery below. It does have pretty funnel-shaped, silvery white, with some yellow, flowers that are very fragrant in late May-early June. The red fruits are actually full of anti-oxidants. It starts off being a pretty shrub when young, but it becomes large, messy, and ugly in time, and it has sharp branch spurs that really hurt if one bumps into them. I am happy to kill off any out in the wild on land preserves when I work to get rid of Eurasian invasive plants in such places to help the native species. I don't know of any regular conventional nurseries selling this species, though a few cheap mail order nurseries do, especially the cultivar of 'Cardinal' that bears more fruit than the mother species.

Reply to this comment

I strongly dislike the plant...
Sure, it smells great.... but........................................................
It gets everywhere, not just from neighboring properties, but also from birds and animals eating the berries and spreading them.

If left untamed it grows up to giant woody bushes that can be 7 or 8 feet tall!!!! It is very painful to cut them down.

The back of the leaves is silvery with brown dots. Red berries in fall.

Reply to this comment

Say what you may...the fragrance of this plant is absolutely incredible...each and every spring!!!!

Reply to this comment