This durable and sweet smelling plant thrives in North Texas landscapes. Give it a chance

A romantic guy would probably remember the perfume his wife wore on their very first date. This plant geek remembers the aroma that filled the air on James Parkway across my childhood home there in College Station. My dad hit me fly balls out in that park. I practiced golf out there as well (total waste of time). I kicked field goals over the swing set at the north end of that park. And I learned to love Elaeagnus pungens ‘Fruitlandii’ out there as well.

My dad was a botanist by his training, so he knew its name. That was a big head start, because otherwise I don’t think any of the neighbors would have been able to help me. However, we all marveled at how that tough old shrub had endured all the drought and neglect — and little boys like young Neil climbing through it for what must have been decades. And it just kept on thriving.

So now for my sales pitch. I’m just going to call it “elaeagnus,” because I’ve never heard anyone use the “common” name you’ll see assigned to it: “fruitland silverberry.”

Elaeagnus must have the sweetest smelling flowers of any plant on the planet. Sweeter than violets. Even sweeter than roses. I can honestly tell you with my wife as my witness, I sniffed one out in a large commercial parking lot one October from 100 yards away. We couldn’t see it when we got out of the car, but I knew it was there somewhere, and I found it. It’s sweet, and it’s mobile. The slightest breeze carries it clear through the neighborhood. And that’s interesting, too, because the flowers are inconspicuous, almost unsightly. They hang like little brown bells from each of the twigs concealed by foliage. And the plant blooms now (late fall), when you least expect shrubs to be flowering.

The flowers are followed by small, oval-shaped fruit that are about 85% seed. The outside is fuzzy, and if you harvest them before they’re fully ripened in spring they’ll pucker you up. I’m probably the only person on earth who enjoys eating them, so I’ll not waste any more time with that part of my sales presentation.

The part of the story that really needs to be told is about the plant’s incredible durability. It thrives in our heat, and it’s even fairly resistant to drought. It has that coveted gray-green look in the landscape, so it’s a fine complement to the dark greens of hollies, magnolias, oaks, and our various evergreen groundcovers.

Elaeagnus has a handsome natural growth form if we’ll just leave it alone. The problem is that too many people insist on shearing it into globes and boxes, and it’s a miserable choice for that kind of look.

It grows to be 6 or 7 feet tall and 7 to 9 feet wide. If you give it that kind of space it will be develop into a nice rounded, almost arching habit of growth. You can easily enough trim off rogue branches if they occur (and they will), but the secret is to do so with lopping shears, not with hedge trimmers. Each branch should be pruned individually. That takes a bit longer, but if done correctly, you can reduce the size of the plant by 30% to 40% without even being able to tell that it’s been pruned.

I do have a couple of added comments. Elaeagnus leaves are green on top with silvery undersides. If you look closely at the bottoms of the leaves you will see copper-colored specks that might lead you to believe that your plant has insects, perhaps even spider mites. However, those spots are just part of the normal coloration of elaeagnus leaves.

Also, in having grown this plant in the Fort Worth/Dallas area for more than 50 years, I have lost it to cold damage one time. That was in the cold spell of February 2021. Like many of our other shrubs and trees, it had already geared up to start growing and the last-minute extreme cold send it into a tailspin. Since that cold did so much damage to a large percentage of our landscape plant species, I don’t hold that against elaeagnus.

I’ve seen it taken down by cotton root rot, the soil-borne fungus that is all through the Blackland Clay Prairie here in North Central Texas. Again, though, more than 80% of our plant species are susceptible to that disease, and the numbers of elaeagnus that I’ve seen die from it is small enough that I don’t worry too much about it.

Finally, you may be tempted to try variegated Elaeagnus but I would caution against it. The colors are always bright and fresh at the nursery, but after a year or two in the landscape they lose much of their contrast. It’s probably our heat and intense sun. They’re not as stunning as we expect the day that we plant them.

That concludes my presentation on behalf of my lifelong friend. I hope you found it useful, and I do hope you’ll give it a chance at your place. The two of you are likely to become fast friends in the process.