I have one. It has been in the ground for 2 years now.
I got some fruit this year, but the birds all beat me to it. :(
Be sure to net them. They are very care free and attractive.
You have to be sure they are dead ripe, or your mouth will puck-up.

I have red current bushes in my yard now and I love to eat them plain off the bush. I never put sugar on them the way my mother used to do. When you pick the whole cluster of fruit when most of the stem is ripe you always get some of the berries that are not very ripe and those never bother me either. So the Cherry Elaeagnus sound like I would really like them.

I have several of these, I just love them. They are easy to care for and the birds love them too. We just put a net on one of the bushes if we want the fruit. The birds get the others.
They make really good jelly too.

Ok, thats it. I couldn't stand it anymore and just ordered 6 of these from Raintree Nursery. I ordered the Sweet Scarlett. They ship in the fall so I will have my plants in October. I figgure this gives me some time get the spot ready for them plus by getting them in the fall they will get a chance to get their root system established and get a jump on spring. I can't wait to get them!!!

LOL You won't regret it! I want to get more (or root some cuttings), we have lots of room and like planting wildlife friendly plants. These are just great...

If you want another suggestion for a wildlife friendly, lowcare, and tasty plant,
you may want to look at a Nanking cherry.

I know I have to fight with the birds in spring if I want a taste.

They grow to about six feet and can make a pretty hedge.
They are some of the first flowers I see in spring, and the flowers
seem to be restistant to frosts. The flower cover the bush with samll white petals.
The berries come in red or white.

If you look around, you can get a good deal on a number of them

Sounds like everyone is enjoying this fruit. I think I'll order one this fall. I saw it listed in the Forest Farm catalog so I will order it from them along with some more amelanchiers (aka juneberries), another fruit that I enjoy. Anyone know if I need two cherry elaeagnus plants for fruiting?

If you're not familiar with Forest Farm, you may want to check out their extensive catalog. I've ordered from them for several years and they do have a number of shrubs and trees that are edible, both natives and some hybrids. Another good source for uncommone edible native shrubs and trees is Oikos Tree Crops. I ordered from them this past spring and was pleased. Really like their selection.

Acording to the One Green World Catalog, which is where I first spotted this wonderful shrub, its self-fertile and hardy to minus 25 degrees.

I am not sure if I have room for the Nanking cherry as it requires two but I will be doing more landscape improvements next year so maybe then. They sound nice, so thank you for the suggestion.

I did not order anything from Forest Farm but have seen their website. I did, however, also order Serviceberries for shipping this year so my budget is spent and I have work to do in the garden to get ready for my plants. I keep thinking about all the yummy fruits to come!!!!

Thank you "newyorkrita" for the eleagnus fruiting answer.

I already have some juneberries in my garden and I really enjoy them fresh. I'm sure you will too.

Hidden Springs catalog states the folowing about nanking cherry "for HEAVIER bearing, order two or more". Does anyone have just one planted and still get descent fruiting or is it necessary to have two or more? I purchased the white variety last year from Edible Landscaping not realizing that I might need another.

Hurray, Hurray!!! The Goumi shrubs arrived today from Raintree Nursery. Actually I was expecting really, really tiny things so was happy to see decently sized shrublets. I am going to make them into a hedge and they should look good. The leaves are lovely, a deep glossey green that I think is going to look very attractive with the shrubs done as an informal hedge.

I was supprised that they have wicked thorns! Doing an internet search on them, somehow I was of the opinion that unlike other members of the Elaeagnus family, that they were thornless. Oh well, just prune VERY carefully.

Lots of planting to do this weekend as I also had some Arrowwood Viburnums arrive from Forest Farm today and want to get everything in and planted so that all my shrubs can get a nice root system establised before really cold wheather comes in.

hmm, my Goumi dosent have any thorns. You might want to check with some others and with the nursery, before you plant it. It may have been mislabled.

The leaves should speckled have a slight silvery coloring on the underside. Also the young stems should be a rusty bown and slightly speckled.

Umm... Dito what Lostman said.

My Cherry E. doesn't have thorns and the leaves have a distinctive silvery underside. You should check your new plants NYRita. I know some of the other Elaeagnus are invasive. I hope they sent the right ones. :(

Jerri

The stems are brown and speckled and the underside of the leaves are silvery with brown speckles. I was VERY surprised myself to see the thorns. Believe me, I did not want to replace a row of thorney barberry hedges with something else with thorns. Still, I very much do want the cherry elaeagnus and the plants look very attractive. Plus the thorns are different than those of a barberry, sparcely spaced long needlelike things that get your attention immediately if you touch them.

Also, I ordered the "Sweet Scarlett" . I don't know if that makes any difference. I can't find any thorns on three of the shrubs since I checked them all this morning but the other four have the thorns. Otherwise all of them look the same.

I don't know what variety mine are since I got them from my father. He doesn't know either. Maybe the Sweet Scarlet is a little different. I think I'll order one or two of them to have a different variety. I don't think I could have to many of them!

I guess I didn't look at them carefully enough the otherday. I am working on planting them and see that they ALL have thorns. Six of these are going to make a short (20 feet or so) hedgerow and one in another spot. I decided to order two more in the spring but this time I will get the selection. Maybe that will not have thorns, might as well try. They are nice looking, the hedgerow will look wonderfull.

I would look into getting them from Hidden Springs Nursery
Hector Black is very knowledgable about Eleagnus species.
He could tell you for sure what you have. He also carries some specific varieties of goumi and autmn olive.

By the way, "Sweet Scarlet" from Russia is the only cultivate variety listed in my "Cornicopia II" book.

Well, I have sent for the Hidden Springs Catalog. I will see what they have after it arrives. I am deffinately getting two more or maybe four more Goumi in the spring but I will get a different Cultivar and getting them from someone who knows what they are talking about sounds like a good idea to me.

I am done for this year, anything else will be done in the spring. The bushes I have look just like any picture I can find of Goumi. The thorns are still a mystery to me.

Well, I got my Hidden Springs Catalog. They only have one Goumi listed which I guess is the species. They do have 6 vatieties of Autumn Olive listed. I didn't even know there where varieties of Autumn Olive. Anyway, I will have to call them and see what they can tell me before I order more Gourmi bushes for the Spring.

I read that these orignially had thorns and that Burbank worked on breeding a strain that was more thornless. Perhaps most strains have thorns.

The "Sweet Scarlet" is a Ukranian variety. The catalog said it is a large fruited variety.

I am all excited because I was closely studying my Goumi shrubs and what do I see but flower buds coming!!!! Hurray!!! I didn't expect flowers this first year as I just put them in this fall but now I am super excited. The buds are just coming, barely there so you have to look very carefully. I suppose their really aren't that many of them considering but this is a great start. I just love when something new gets buds for the first time and you know you are going to have flowers and fruit to look forward to.

Well, they have some fruit. Unfortunatly they also have powdery mildew. Too much rain this spring. The shrubs started out really well this spring but now they are struggeling. I hope they can grow out of it.

I sprayed the shrubs with something for the mildew and they all are much better now. I garden organicly and rarely, rarely use sprays but I figgured I had no choice. They didn't grow much because of the mildew problems. The mildew is gone now. I was really surprised that this happened as they are supposed to be pest and desease free.

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to get more of them because of their problems. So I am going to order three more for this Fall. That way, maybe they can flower in the Spring too, just as last years did!

As to the suggestion somewhere in this thread that I also consider Nanking Cherries, I just planted three of them on Saturday. Can't wait for them to flower and fruit next spring.When I originially thought I had no room for the Nankings, I had not gotten to clearing out a neglected and wasted area in my yard that now is being put to much better use with some Elderberries planted, Nanking Cherries and the three to be ordered Goumi shrubs will be there also!

Did you get a chance to try any of the fruit? How would you describe it?

Also the flowers are described as "fuscia-like", is that how you would describe them? How large are the flowers?

Thanks...

~Chills

The flowers are really tiny. I had to bend down close to see them and peer at them. The fruit isn't very large either. I didn't eat any of the fruit because I had sprayed it. The label did say you could eat fruit sprayed after 3 days but I just didn't want to eat them. Will have to wait until next Spring to try them!

Wonder what they look like?

Here is a link that might be useful: goumi

Are you talking about this plant (see the link below)?
Newyorkrita, you wrote about Ukrainian variety. I should say that I have never seen Shepherdia here, in Ukraine. I am looking for it for many years and could not find any. Elaeagnus angustifolia is quite common, it grows everywhere.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:669183}}

My One Green World Catalog came and I noticed they had a new variety of Goumi from Russia called 'Red Gem'. I want to see how my 'Sweet Scarlett' do before I think about ordering more.

Reading these postings just cracked me up! Two pwoplw on this site steered me to the right identification of GOUMI tree. GOUMI in Japanese means garbage! Our local gomi-baba is the lady who spies on everyone's garbage when we leave it at the central dropping point, then goes to your house to scold you if you left the wrong type on the wrong day. (Plastic bottles left on unburnable-plastics day-every other moMonday as opposed to pkplastic bottle day on Wednesdays. Goumi bush-I love it! I will have to check with our local garden shop this spring to see if they carry it.

newyorkrita, I found a variagated Elaeagnus! I got it from Forest Farm and it came in on Friday. It's very pretty! I hope to plant it tomorrow. :)

I think the regular green Goumis are pretty. Anyway. I finially had a chance to eat the fruit.

I was surprised at how much bigger the fruit was this year than last year. I guess thats because the shrubs were new then. Anyway, I tasted some fruits last week and boy were they SOUR! So I left them and tried again today when they were nice and red. The ones to eat are the ones that are red and alittle soft. WOW, WONDERFUL!!!! I can't believe how yummy!

Ha! I can see the little flower clusters coming on my Goumi shrubs. Can't wait for the yummy fruit.

Wow, it's so cool you came back to this thread for a followup!

I would also like to add that besides providing a tasty fruit, the goumi (Elaeagnus) is also a nitrogen fixing plant. That means that with the help of bacteria, goumi is able to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it into the soil where other plants can use it. Planting Goumi, in a sense, is like adding fertilizer the soil for the surrounding plants to use. I highly recommend planting any of the Elaeagnus species of plants. All fix nitrogen and many produce a fruit of a sort.

That is my two cents...

All my Goumi are blooming for the past 4 days or so. I have six of them in a row to form a hedgrow and when you get near that area of the garden, it has the most wonderful sweet scent! This is the first year that I have noticed how nice they smell, although it is the third year they are blooming. Still, this year is the heaviest bloom set so far, so that might be why I never noticed it before.

This spring the Goumi bloomed heavily again, even more so than last year as the shrubs get bigger. The scent when the flowers were in bloom was fantastic. You couldn't get near that area of the yard without the scent floating in the air. And the fruit crop has been awesome. Never before have I had so much fruit on these shrubs.

Birds like to eat these berries and the birds have been having a field day. Robins, Catbirds, Mockingbirds and Orioles all day long scafing up berries.

I live in Michigan. I have Autumn Olive. Is that the same as Russian Olive? Can you make jelly out of either one? Yes, mine also have wicked thorns and they send up tens of suckers every year, even after I cut the first ones out. Very fragrant in spring. I have heard that the fruit is high in lycopene. Donnaernie posted a recipe for the jelly. Does anyone else have a recipe. I am used to using powdered pectin. These plants are very invasive. They are growing all over in the woods. What a bird eats gets dropped.

Interesting to hear about others'experience with Goumi. Mine is about 6 feet tall and covered with berries this year (it's about 5 or 6 years old), and they're larger than last year. Forgot about birds liking them; must get out the netting. Used it before, but such a crop this year...must protect! Anyone have any recipes or info on how to get the seeds out? A sieve?