Brief by Central Staff
Agriculture – January 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Colorado State Forest Service used to sell the seedlings at a minimal price to encourage landowners to plant this shrub, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommended it for windbreaks on the Great Plains. The hardy plant was often used for revegetation of scarred land, since it can survive in dry, windy places with alkaline or salty soils. That may explain why you can find a lot of them growing in southern Chaffee County.
But as of Jan. 1, the sale of Russian Olive trees will be illegal in Colorado. The Colorado Department of Agriculture has classified the popular tree as a noxious weed, and nurseries will be forbidden to sell them.
Scientifically, it’s the Eleagnus augustifolia, a member of the oleaster family. It isn’t exactly an olive, though the females produce small fruits that look like olives and contain its seeds. We’ve heard they’re edible, but we don’t know of anyone who’s eaten them.
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The tree, which can grow up to 30 feet high, originated in southern Europe and western Asia, and was first cultivated in Germany in 1736. It was brought into the United States for ornamental and windbreak plantings in the late 1800s.
Just as domestic animals like cats can escape into the wild and become feral, so can plants, and that happened with the Russian Olive. By the 1920s, it was flourishing without any human help in Utah and Nevada, and it spread to Colorado in the 1950s.
The main problem with the Russian Olive, according to the state agriculture department, isn’t its use in windbreaks and rural landscaping. It’s that the trees spread into riparian zones along rivers and creeks, where they’re so hardy that they crowd out native species like cottonwoods and boxelders.
That changes the food mixture available for wildlife, and those changes ripple throughout the environment. Thus Russian Olives were already banned in many counties before the statewide prohibition was announced.
What should you plant instead if you were planning on Russian Olives for some low-water landscaping?
The state agriculture department recommends a native of western Nebraska (we weren’t aware of any trees in western Nebraska, but on the other hand, it’s an area one tends to cross quickly without making any stops to look for foliage).
It’s the Silver Buffaloberry (Sheperdia argentea), which is also drought-tolerant with silvery-green leaves. It produces berries that birds enjoy, and the University of Nebraska extension service says they can also be used for jellies and jams.
They grow 12 to 18 feet high, with an eight-foot spread, and look almost identical to the Russian Olives, according to Pleasant Avenue Nursery in Buena Vista, which also advised us that they thrive in our high and dry climate.
Other “noxious weeds” banned by the state agriculture department: Bouncingbet, Chinese clematis, Common St. John’s wort, Common tansy, Cypress spurge, Dame’s rocket, Giant salivinia, Hydrilla, Myrtle spurge, Orange hawkweed, Oxeye daisy, Purple loosestrife, Saltcedar, Scentless chamomile, and Yellow toadflax.