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identify Goumi vs Autumn Olive

sgt-panties
9 years ago

Can someone tell be how to tell the difference between the Goumi vs the Autumn Olive plants? I find a lot of description for the later, and then lots of ads from nurseries wanting to sell the former. The physical traits described by the Wikipedia article for each seem to be same.

Comments (5)

  • ediblelandscaping.sc
    9 years ago

    goumis have larger/sweeter fruit that hang on a bush 6-8ft tall Autumn Olive are small very numerous and are close to the branches on a taller bush 12-18ft. go with the goumi if choosing between the 2.

  • fabaceae_native
    9 years ago

    You're right, the physical description is the same because they look almost identical. The flowering/fruiting characteristics are the only differences, in terms of ripening time (July for goumi and September for AO), fruit size (goumi much larger) and fruit production/organization (AO berries very numerous in clusters, goumi less numerous and spread out along branch). Many nurseries sell AO as goumi, and even reputable ones like Raintree and One Green World have conflicting pics and/or descriptions for goumi. So if it is goumi you want make sure everything matches up before you buy, otherwise you will be stuck with AO!

  • Meredith Spitalnik
    5 years ago

    Yup, they sold me AO seedlings as Goumi. Small berries, ripe Oct 1. Grrr... I didn't even question it till I bought two named varietals of Goumi and noticed how much larger the berries were :(

  • Emily Hawes
    last year

    This would be so much more helpful if, instead of "larger" someone would say How large: One inch? One is a half inch and one is a quarter inch long on average? One is x cm and the other is x.5 cm? It would help with identification when someone has one of these plants and not both for comparison.

  • HU-345987177
    9 months ago

    On my sweet scarlet goumi from Jung Nursery for $10 back in 2005ish, it took 3 years to fruit at maybe 5 feet tall, the fruit was the size of a highbush blueberry, I would say 1.5 cm, oblong. It's fruit grew sweeter as it grew older in age. I don't believe it was my learning of the ripening period, which is when it is squishy between fingers. I could try it still hard later years and it was just as delicious. It grew 10ft before I moved, never spread. The autumn olive I believe is more fragrant, it can be sickly sweet smelling. Its fruit are round balls the size of a small pea, half a centimeter large. When I compared my goumi leaves to the wild relative I found, I thought my goumi had gold specks and was far prettier than the silvery glitter on the autumn olive. The sweet scarlet has larger fruit to pit ratio. I think freezing the fruit makes the pit more tough. My first year trying to cook goumi it tasted like tomtoe sauce and later years more of cherry. The autumn olive tasted like tomato each year I ate it. it never tasted of cherries to me.

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