North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["tanis cuff" <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

The autumn olives in my neighborhood have gotten numerous enough, and had 
enough fruit this year, that I tried sorting out some better ones.  I didn't 
find any w/ the larger sized fruits which have been mentioned previously on 
the list.  I still have one patch to check.

Bushes mostly have small bitter fruits, lots of tannic acid.  A few w/ more 
sugar, for a strong tart-sweet zippy flavor. Rarely a flavorless dull one.  
Biggest problem seems to be season length-- we had a long warm summer, yet 
even in early Nov some bushes didn't ripen fruits completely.  Secondary 
problem is rabbits feed on bark thru winter, which might rejuvinate a clump 
but reduces the fruit yield, because autumn olive yields on older wood (at 
least, the ones I saw.)

I didn't notice any diseases, except maybe a stem canker, but this was 
always low on the stems and may have been just rabbit damage.

tc, s.WI, some autumn olive on sand, some on silt, some shaded, some sunny