Plant spotlight - Nitrogen Fixing Autumn Olive

Whether it's directly in your permaculture food forest, or you just wild forage them for their awesome berries, Autumn Olive is a plant you should be familiar with. While there are invasive concerns (as with almost all nitrogen fixing plants growing on a dying planet), there is certainly nothing wrong with foraging from the ones in existence today.

If you do transplant one and bring it home, I would argue that plant is better at home than in the wild, as the owner can manage it better at home. It also follows several other "invasive" nitrogen fixer qualities: thin leaves that don't block out competition, and they die from shade as other plants get over top of them. They don't stall out ecosystems, they rebuild them. They just spread really fast, because they are spreading on dead soil, repairing it. Calling them invasive is like calling a scab on a wound invasive, because it keeps "spreading" as it tries to rebuild your skin.

Useful plant. Be cautious. (But you'll be fine). As a testament to that, when I zoom out and you can see those power lines... those bushes have been there for at least a decade or more. Does it look like they are a problem? There is quite a lot of diversity there, and they aren't strangling anything out. Always keep in mind, different location in the world, different results. So it may be more or less invasive in different areas. As always when you spread genetic plant material around, you have a tremendous responsibility, so take it seriously. You can do incredible damage doing the wrong thing (dog strangling vine, kudzu, Japanese Chestnut trees bringing over Cryphonectria parasitica, etc).

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