There are some plants that were popularized based on good intentions, and some that genuinely have almost all good qualities, and no serious negatives. Some are ecological disasters wrapped in good intentions, and autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) is exhibit A.
When we bought our property, autumn olive was already here—hundreds of stems colonizing every wooded edge, fencerow, and field margin. We’ve been fighting it ever since. We’ve lost battles, learned hard lessons, and finally found an approach that works. Sort of. The war isn’t over, and honestly, it never will be. But we’re holding the line now, and maybe our mistakes can save you some time, money, and frustration.
This article isn’t about planting autumn olive. It’s about why you shouldn’t, and if you already have it, how to fight back.
How Autumn Olive Got Promoted
Autumn olive has a compelling origin story. Back in the 1950s through the 1980s, the USDA and state conservation agencies actively promoted it. The pitch was seductive: fast-growing shrub, nitrogen-fixing roots to improve soil, abundant berries for wildlife, excellent for erosion control. It was planted by the thousands across the Midwest for highway stabilization, mine reclamation, and wildlife habitat improvement.
And the pitch wasn’t entirely wrong. Autumn olive does fix atmospheric nitrogen through root nodules, similar to legumes. Wildlife, especially birds, do love the abundant red berries that ripen in late summer and fall. It grows very fast, tolerates poor soil, and establishes easily. On paper, it’s a multi-purpose conservation superstar.
The problem is what happens next.
Those wildlife-attracting berries? Each one contains a seed. A mature autumn olive shrub can produce hundreds of thousands of berries in a season. Birds and squirrels feast on them, then fly or scamper off to deposit the seeds—fully fertilized and ready to germinate—across your entire property and beyond. The germination rate is high. The seedlings grow fast. Within a few years, one planted shrub becomes ten volunteers. Within a decade, it’s hundreds.
Autumn olive doesn’t play nice with native vegetation. It leafs out early in spring and holds its leaves late into fall, giving it a competitive advantage over native shrubs and tree seedlings. It forms dense thickets that shade out everything underneath. It aggressively colonizes disturbed areas, woodland edges, old fields—basically anywhere with sunlight and soil – and as luck would have it, our property has both sunlight and soil.
Yes, it fixes nitrogen. Yes, wildlife eat the berries. But those marginal benefits are completely overwhelmed by its invasive aggression. It’s like hiring someone who’s great at one task but burns down your house in the process. The cost-benefit analysis doesn’t work.
Where We Found It
From day one on this property, autumn olive was impossible to miss. Wooded edges: check. Fencerows: check. Field margins: check. Old trails through the timber: check. It was everywhere that wasn’t actively mowed or cultivated, although less prevalent within the more mature wooded areas.
We didn’t plant it—we inherited it, almost certainly from birds depositing seeds from neighboring properties or older plantings on our own land. The pattern was classic invasive behavior: highest density at woodland edges where light levels are good, and along fencelines where it was hard to keep mowed or cut for hay.
The scale was daunting. Not a dozen plants. Not fifty. Hundreds of individual stems, ranging from pencil-thin seedlings to multi-stemmed monsters eight feet tall and twelve feet across. In some stretches of fencerow, autumn olive formed an impenetrable wall of silvery-green foliage and thorny branches.
The ecological damage was obvious. Where autumn olive dominated, native shrubs were absent or struggling. Young oak seedlings that should have been regenerating the forest edges were being shaded and outcompeted.
We had a choice: accept the invasion and watch it get worse, or fight back. We chose to fight.
Battle #1 – What Didn’t Work: Cut and Walk Away
Our first approach was optimistic and naïve: cut the stems at ground level and move on. After all, that works for plenty of shrubs and small trees. Cut them down, they might resprout once or twice, but eventually they give up, right?
Wrong.
Autumn olive responded to cutting like we’d challenged it to a duel. A single stem cut at the base would send up five, eight, sometimes ten new shoots from the root crown. The regrowth was fast and vigorous, often taller and denser than the original. We’d spend a weekend clearing a section of fencerow, feel good about the progress, and come back six months later to find the autumn olive bushier and more aggressive than before.
This was more than frustrating—it was counterproductive. Cutting alone doesn’t kill autumn olive; it stimulates it. The plant has massive energy reserves in its root system, and those roots are undamaged by surface cutting. If anything, removing the aboveground growth seems to trigger a survival response that makes the plant invest even more energy into new shoots.
We wasted time, effort, fuel, blood, and sweat on this approach. Worse, we probably made the problem worse in some areas by encouraging the multi-stem regrowth pattern. Autumn olive was laughing at us.
Battle #2 – What Didn’t Work: Glyphosate
Okay, cutting alone didn’t work. Time to bring in chemicals. Glyphosate—commonly sold as Roundup—is the go-to herbicide for woody plant control. It’s effective on a wide range of species when applied to freshly cut stems or sprayed on foliage. We’d used it successfully on other invasive plants.
So we sprayed the shrubs with glyphosate spray over the leaves. Glyphosate will kill these leaves, and usually the branches or shoots that they are on. But, new shoots would emerge from closer to the base. And these shoots would keep right on growing.
Glyphosate will work on small seedlings, I’d say about 3-4 ft tall or less. We’ve had best success with glyphosate later in the summer and fall, and only on small seedlings.
Battle #3 – What’s Working: Triclopyr and Persistence
Enter triclopyr, the herbicide we should have started with. Triclopyr is a selective herbicide that targets broadleaf plants, including woody species. It’s the active ingredient in products like Brushtox, which we buy at Rural King or Tractor Supply for about $70 per gallon. Because Brushtox is in an ester formulation (oil-soluble), it works well to be mixed with diesel to spray on trunk bark. We mix Brushtox (61% triclopyr) with diesel in a 1:4 ratio to apply to bark on trunk. Products like Crossbow (at Tractor Supply) or Crossroads (at Rural King), also include triclopyr (16%), but are in an amine formulation, so don’t work well to either mix with diesel or apply to trunks or bark. Triclopyr in an amine formulation is good mix with water to apply to foliage.
We are using two different protocols, both of which seem to be working: A) cut the autumn olive stem as close to the ground as possible, then immediately apply a 25% triclopyr / 75% diesel fuel mix to the cut surface. The diesel acts as a carrier, helping the triclopyr penetrate into the root system. Timing is critical—you need to treat the cut surface within minutes, before the plant can seal off the wound. Or B) spray a 25% triclopyr / 75% diesel mix low on the trunk, surrounding the trunk if possible. This is a little tricky, as the shrub doesn’t grow up as much as it grows every other direction. Safety glasses are not an option for this task. After crawling around spraying trunks in this manner, I don’t think I’ve ever emerged not bleeding somewhere.
But, this approach works. Not perfectly, not 100% of the time, but much, much better than anything else we’ve tried. Treated stems typically don’t resprout, and the sprayed trunks seem to have killed the shrub. The root system dies back. We’re finally killing autumn olive, not just pruning it.
The success rate is probably 80-90% on the first treatment. Some plants require a second application if they send up a weak resprout, but those are easier to spot and treat. Over the past few years, we’ve permanently killed dozens of large autumn olive stems this way.
The cost is reasonable given the results. We go through about a gallon of Brushtox per year at $70, plus diesel which is negligible. That’s $90 annually to keep hundreds of autumn olive plants from taking over the property. Compared to the ecological and aesthetic cost of doing nothing, it’s money well spent.
Safety matters with triclopyr. We wear gloves, long sleeves, and eye protection. The mix is applied carefully to cut stems and basal bark, not broadcast-sprayed. We’re not cavalier about herbicide use, but we’re also realistic: there’s no effective organic-only solution for established autumn olive. Sometimes chemicals are the least-bad option.
The Practicalities: It’s Harder Than It Sounds
Here’s what the triclopyr protocol looks like in practice: you find an autumn olive shrub. It’s likely six to eight feet tall, multi-stemmed, bushy, and full of thorny branches. You can’t just walk up and cut the base—you have to crouch, crawl, or contort yourself to reach the root crown at ground level. The shrub fights you every inch, branches catching on your clothes and scratching exposed skin.
You cut the stem with a hand saw or chainsaw, working low to the ground. Then immediately—no delay—you apply the triclopyr/diesel mix to the fresh cut with a squirt bottle or brush. Move to the next stem, repeat. If it’s a large multi-stem plant, you might have five or ten individual stems to cut and treat from the same root crown.
It’s slow, physical work. You’re bending, kneeling, reaching into thorny tangles. Your back hurts. When you cut a stem, it frequently falls on you. It’s the opposite of cutting an area of grass with a zero turn —this is intimate, frustrating combat with a plant that doesn’t want to die. And then, after cutting and spraying the stump, the shrub itself may need to be chipped, burned, or moved. And the shrub has a spreading form, so it’s not a straight stem that is easy to chop into logs for stacking/moving.
The reality is that manually cutting and spraying hundreds of stems is a multi-year project. We make progress, but it’s incremental. Clear one fencerow this year, another the next. Constantly monitor for new seedlings popping up from the massive seedbank in the soil.
There’s another option we’re seriously considering: mechanized mulching. You can rent a skid-steer (bobcat) with a forestry mulching head attachment for around $1200 per day. That setup will grind through autumn olive—and pretty much anything else—turning stems and branches into wood chips in seconds. It’s fast and thorough.
The catch is that mulching alone doesn’t kill the roots. You still need to follow up with herbicide treatments on resprouts, but you’re starting from mulched stumps instead of full-sized shrubs. The initial knockdown is much faster. For heavily infested areas, spending $1200 on a day of mulching might accelerate our progress by years.
We haven’t pulled the trigger on renting the equipment yet, but it’s on the table for the future. Sometimes you need to escalate to win.
The Ongoing Campaign: What’s Next
Let’s be clear: we haven’t “won” against autumn olive. We’ve achieved victories—specific areas cleared, large plants killed—but the war is ongoing. Seeds keep getting spread. New seedlings appear every spring. Birds continue to deposit seeds from neighboring properties.
Our five-to-ten-year outlook is control, not eradication. We’re aiming to knock back the population to a manageable level, keep it from spreading further, and prevent new establishment in cleared areas. Complete eradication would require treating every seed in the soil and preventing any new introductions, which is functionally impossible.
In areas where we’ve successfully removed autumn olive, we’re seeing encouraging signs. Native shrubs are starting to recover. Tree seedlings—white and black oak —are establishing without being smothered. The forest edge is starting to look like it should, not like The National Autumn Olive Arboretum.
We’re also monitoring constantly. Every walk through the property includes scanning for new autumn olive seedlings. Catching them when they’re six inches tall and easily hand-pulled is infinitely easier than dealing with six-foot mature shrubs. Early detection and rapid response is the only way to prevent new infestations.
This is long-term management, not a one-and-done project. We’re committed to it because the alternative—letting autumn olive take over completely—is unacceptable.
Advice for Others: Don’t Let It Start
If you’re reading this and you don’t have autumn olive on your property, congratulations.
Scout your woodland edges, fencerows, and field margins regularly. Learn to identify autumn olive: silvery-green leaves with a distinctive silver underside, thorny branches, abundant red berries in late summer. If you spot a seedling, pull it immediately. If you find a young plant, cut it and treat it with triclopyr before it ever produces berries.
Do not let autumn olive fruit. Every berry is thousands of future problems. Aggressive early intervention—killing plants before they reach reproductive maturity—is the only realistic prevention strategy.
If you already have autumn olive, start the triclopyr campaign now. Not next year. Now. Every year you delay is another year of seed production, another cohort of seedlings, another few hundred stems to deal with later. This problem does not get better with time.
Don’t waste effort on approaches that don’t work. Cutting alone doesn’t work. Glyphosate works, but only on single stemmed seedlings, it doesn’t work reliably for larger shrubs. Save yourself the frustration and go straight to triclopyr-based treatment.
And finally, accept that this is a multi-year commitment. You’re not going to kill all the autumn olive in a weekend. You’re going to chip away at it, year after year, until the population is under control. It’s unglamorous work, but it’s necessary.
The Invasive Species Reality Check
Not all advice turns out to be good advice. Autumn olive is a stark reminder that some plants—even ones promoted by government agencies for conservation purposes—turn out to be ecological disasters. The intentions were good. The outcome is a landscape-scale invasive plant problem that landowners across the Midwest are still fighting decades later.
Our property’s autumn olive infestation is a cautionary tale. It’s also a testament to the fact that invasive species management is part of land stewardship, like it or not. We didn’t choose this fight, but we’re in it now.
The good news is that triclopyr works. The better news is that native alternatives exist for every supposed “benefit” of autumn olive. Want nitrogen fixation? Plant native legumes. Want wildlife berries? Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) is native, produces abundant fruit loved by birds, and doesn’t become invasive. Want erosion control? Native grasses, shrubs, and trees do the job without ecological collateral damage.
Autumn olive has no place in agroforestry or conservation plantings. It had its moment, based on incomplete understanding of invasive species risk. That moment is over. Now we’re left cleaning up the mess.
Our war against autumn olive continues. We’re winning more battles than we lose these days, but new fights appear every spring.
If you have autumn olive, I hope our experience helps you fight more effectively. If you don’t have it, stay vigilant and keep it that way. Some invasive species can be tolerated. Autumn olive isn’t one of them.
Fighting invasive species on your property? Have questions about control methods or alternative native plantings? Share your experiences—we’re all in this together, and collective knowledge helps everyone manage their land more effectively.
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