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You are here: Home / Foraging / Foraging Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata)

Foraging Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata)

November 9, 2020 by Ashley Adamant 8 Comments

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Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) is a tasty edible wild fruit that ripens late in the fall.  The plants are nitrogen fixers, which means they can grow on incredibly poor soil.  Combine that with exceptional cold hardiness, and they’re the perfect fruit to forage where little else will grow.

Foraging Autumn Oli

Autumn olive, scientific name Elaeagnus umbellata, is also called Japanese silverberry, spreading oleaster, autumn elaeagnus, or autumnberry. The ripe berries of the autumn olive tree are crimson in color and have a sweet yet pleasantly tart flavor, making them ideal for use in both savory dishes and dessert recipes. 

Autumn olives are highly nutritious and are an excellent source of the antioxidant lycopene as well as vitamins A, C, and E.  Their high lycopene content (like tomatoes) inspired quite a few autumn olive ketchup recipes amoung forager friends, and they’re all delicious.

In addition to having myriad culinary uses, there’s a practical reason to forage for autumn olives: The shrub Elaeagnus umbellata is a major invasive species in North America.

Originally from eastern Asia (where the plant is considered non-invasive), autumn olive shrubs first brought to the eastern United States in the mid-1800s, where they used to prevent soil erosion and as a decorative shrub in gardens. 

Elaeagnus umbellata spreads quickly because of its hardiness and dense concentration of seeds — a single shrub can yield around 200,000 seeds, potentially producing up to 80 pounds of fruit! 

With these autumn olive facts in mind, let’s learn how to forage for these jewel-like rubies of the forest!
 
Child holding autumn olive fruits

Where to Find Autumn Olive

Autumn olive is an aggressive invasive shrub that can be found throughout the eastern United States and Canada. To a much smaller extent, reports of wild autumn olive have been made in central States, as well as in Oregon and Washington State. This helpful map will let you know if you live in an area where autumn olives are plentiful. 
 
If you live in an autumn olive-abundant area you might be pleasantly surprised by how easy they are to find!
 
Autumn olive trees are draught and erosion-resistant and they thrive in many different types of environments. I’ve found these shrubs growing on our land, along forest edges, and in ditches. Other disturbed locations, such as sand dunes, vacant lots, fields, railroads, pastures, and even abandoned mines are also favorite growing sites for autumn olive trees.  
 
The one place you probably won’t find autumn olives? Despite tolerating a moderate amount of shade, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to find these berries growing in a densely wooded forest. 
 

Autumn Olive Fruits

Identifying autumn olive

Autumn olive trees are fairly large, they typically range in height from 10 to 18 feet tall and the mature shrub can reach a width of 30 feet.

As is typical with an invasive species, autumn olive trees grow quickly — the shrub begins producing fruit when it’s three years old and has an average fruit-producing lifespan of 40 years.

Autumn Olive Bush

Autumn Olive Leaves

Depending on where you live, autumn olive leaves first begin to appear in March and throughout early May, with each leaf growing from 2 to 4 inches in length. 

The leaves are an elongated oval, or elliptical, shape and grow alternately (this means that one leaf grows from each plant node on alternate sides of the branch). The edges of the autumn olive leaf are classified as being undulate, or wavy, and has an entire margin, meaning the leaf has no teeth or serration marks. 

As you can see in the pictures below, the topside of the leaf is a true green, while the underside is more of a slate green flecked with small golden-brown spots.Autumn Olive Leaves

You’ll also notice the underside of the leaf has a rougher, scaly texture while the topside is comparatively smooth. 

While the leaves are relatively non-descript from a distance, looking at the undersides will really help you identify Elaeagnus species.

Autumn Olive Leaves Underside

Autumn Olive Bark

The twigs on a young autumn olive tree are a lighter shade of brown with a silvery patina, you’ll also see small tawny-colored scales speckling the branches. The thorns on young branches are typically quite long, so take care when you’re scouting out possible foraging locations!

As the tree ages and grows, the color of the bark turns to a light gray or grayish-brown color. You’ll notice that the bark on mature autumn olive trees is more fibrous and that it peels off in long, narrow strips. 

autumn olive bark

Autumn Olive Flowers

The blooms from the autumn olive tree have a strong floral scent — the aroma is often compared to lilies. You’re most likely to smell them from April through June, when they’re in full bloom. 

The tubular flowers are light yellow or cream-colored with bright yellow stamens; each flower has four petals. The blooms typically grow in clusters of 1 to 10 flowers. 

Autumn Olive Fruits

Unripe autumn olive fruits, or autumn berries, are small and silvery. Once the fruit has fully matured — in September and October — the berries turn a bright speckled red or pink.  

Autumn Olive Fruits

Autumn Olive Look-Alikes

Autumn olives are fairly easy to identify but there are a few look-alikes to be aware of. When in doubt, remember that autumn olive trees will always have alternate leaves and small scales covering the bark, the underside of the leaf, and the fruit.

Invasive honeysuckle

Because they both produce red berries, invasive or bush honeysuckle (Diervilla spp.) is sometimes mistaken for autumn olive. Most noticeably, invasive honeysuckle is much smaller, reaching only 3 to 5 feet in both length and width. Unlike the autumn olive tree, which has alternate leaves, honeysuckle leaves grow opposite to one another and there are no silvery scale-like marks on the leaves or bark. 

Other Russian olives

The Russian olive tree (E. angustiolia) is related to the autumn olive tree, but is considerably taller and is a single or multi-stemmed tree. Both sides of Russian olive leaves are silvery and the shape is narrower than leaves from the autumn olive tree. 

Harvesting autumn olive

Autumn olive fruit is at its sweetest when it’s been allowed to fully ripen on the stem. While your mileage may vary depending on where you live, I can typically harvest these berries all the way through December. The longer you can wait, especially if you can hold off until after the first frost, the tastier autumn olive berries will become. 

A word of warning: Unripe autumn olive berries have an intensely astringent flavor and can cause stomach upset for some people.

These berries can be somewhat tedious to pick one-by-one, so I recommend gently shaking them directly from the branch into a bucket, removing any smalls twigs or broken leaves from the berry pile as you work. If you plan on processing the berries for jam (or any other recipe which involves a sieve or straining step) you don’t have to be as careful picking out extraneous bits of autumn olive detritus.

Autumn Olive Fruit

Recipes Using Autumn Olives

Autumn olive berries have a deep, jammy flavor, making them ideal for dessert recipes and homemade condiments. My kids love it when we make autumn berry fruit leather — it’s an activity the whole family can do together.

If you’re looking for autumn olive inspiration, give these recipes a try!

  • Autumn Olive Ketchup from Edible Pioneer Valley
  • Autumn Olive Cookies from Edible Wild Food
  • Lemon and Autumn Olive Tart from Edible Wild Food
  • Autumn Olive Fruit Leather from The Cook’s Cook

Foraging Tutorials

Looking for more tasty fruits to forage this fall?

  • Foraging Nannyberries
  • Foraging Highbush Cranberries
  • Foraging Solomon’s Plume

Foraging Autumn Olive

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Shawn

    November 10, 2020 at 11:58 pm

    Wow that’s great information to know since I have bookoos of these on my little farm! 😃 I had tasted a couple of the berries before but I didn’t know they were actually harvested by anyone other than the birds and deer! Haha

    Reply
  2. Priti Lily

    November 13, 2020 at 2:08 am

    Great information! Wish there were better pictures.. sorry but thanks!

    Reply
  3. Judi

    September 16, 2021 at 3:59 pm

    My favorite use of the autumn olive berries is in my Autumn-Raz Jam. I use a ratio of 2-1 or 3-1 (autumn olive to raspberries, frozen or fresh), and prefer Pomona’s Pectin, allowing a soft gel set with less sugar. The color of the jam is intensely scarlet, and the flavor is equally potent, in the very best way! Great on toast, or as the base layer of a shortbread fruit tart.

    Reply
    • Administrator

      September 17, 2021 at 4:26 pm

      That jam sounds amazing!

      Reply
  4. Susan Mene

    September 20, 2021 at 12:31 pm

    I love this post! I have been foraging autumn olives for years, and always make what I call my “Christmas” jam. I have found that cinnamon complements Autumn Olives, Some cinnamon added to the jam makes the flavor reminiscent of autumn and winter. A taste of the holidays all year ’round! I would give my specific recipe, but it varies depending on the size of the harvest and the types of berries I mix in and their various natural pectin levels. I am going to try the lemon and autumn olive tart listed in the article.
    As for harvesting, I just dip branch into a bag and slide those berries in. I have found trees so abundant that i have collected a gallon of berries in 5 minutes or less. Of course in suburbia, I make sure that anything I forage is away from roads.

    Reply
    • Administrator

      September 20, 2021 at 4:59 pm

      That’s wonderful and your jam sounds amazing. So glad you enjoyed the post.

      Reply
  5. Dee

    September 23, 2021 at 12:03 pm

    Ashley – I love following your page and newsletter. Do you have a book out yet where i can find all this great info for my off-grid library?

    Reply
    • Administrator

      September 23, 2021 at 5:08 pm

      Sorry Dee, there is no book at this time. Lots of people have asked so maybe one day.

      Reply

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I’m an off-grid homesteader in rural Vermont and the author of Practical Self Reliance, a blog that helps people find practical ways to become more self-reliant. Read More…

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