Skip to main content

Sex At The Nursery

We sexed our Silverleaf Buffaloberry plants at the nursery on Valentine’s Day. The flowers are tiny and you must look closely but you can clearly find male and female flowers. 
Males are identified by their protruding stamens.


Females are harder to identify as their pistils just barely protrude from the flower.


Do you have a Silverleaf Buffaloberry that has never made fruit? Maybe it needs a partner?
 If you examine your plants closely, over the next few weeks, looking for tiny yellow flowers, you should be able (by comparison to our photos) to determine if you have a boy or a girl plant.
Then stop by the nursery and we’ll be your matchmaker!

Silverleaf Buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentia) is a large shrub that can reach 6′-15′ tall and wide. It is thorny with silvery-gray leaves. Canopy is very dense. Silverleaf Buffaloberry produces tiny yellow flowers and an edible berry that is red, orange or yellow. There are male and female plants, both are needed to produce fruit. It is a great good choice for use in the xeric garden.


The fruits are consumed by wildlife. Peolpe eat the fruits raw or dried for winter use. 
They are used to make a flavoring sauce for buffalo meat. 
The Silverleaf Buffaloberry has been a staple food for some American Indians.


Trees That Please Nursery
A Retail and Wholesale Nursery
Serving Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Lunas, and Belen
Shade Trees, Fruit Trees, Shrubs, Cacti, Perennials, Gardening Advice

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Question: How close to my house can I plant a Cottonwood tree?

Cottonwoods grow to be immense trees attaining dimensions of up to 40 - 50 feet tall and wide with a root system to match. Cottonwoods have a surface root system that can heave sidewalks, crack walls and home foundations if planted too close. Cottonwoods should be planted a minimal distance from structures of at least 25 feet if not further. Trees That Please Nursery carries two varieties of cotton-less, Cottonwood Trees. Please contact us or stop by the store for more information.

All About the Shantung Maple!

             The Shantung Maple ( Acer truncatum ) is also known as the Purple Blow Maple due to the color of its newly emerging leaves which are red-purple (see photo below). These young expanding red-purple leaves change to green as they mature. Leaves are small, about the size of Japanese Red Maple leaves, perhaps 3’-4’ wide at maturity.    The Shantung Maple grows 1′-2′ annually reaching 25″ tall and wide.    This is our tree for all planting situations. This Maple does well in heavy clay, sandy soils, full sun, or part shade. It can be planted in a lawn or next to a hot asphalt street (see photo below). It seemingly is a happy tree enjoying life wherever it is placed.    One place we would not recommend planting this tree is in a rockscape which is just too hot and inhospitable to support this beautiful tree.               A smaller tree, the Shantung Ma...

How does nitrogen work in the soil, and where does it come from when we don't have a bag of fertilizer to supplement it?

I've spoken many times on this subject at conferences and it was the main theme of my talk when I represented North America at the World's 1st Humus Experts Meeting in Vienna Austria back in 2013.   Most of the Nitrogen used by the vast tropical rain forests, or the fastest growing biomass place on Earth, the Coastal Redwood Forests of California, comes from the production of protein by the Free-Living Nitrogen Fixing bacteria in soil and the massive biomass structure of the mycorrhizal fungi.    The proteins as it breaks down in the soil into amino acids are the building blocks of life and the explanation of the Soil Food Web.  However, in order for those amino acids to enter a plant and be part of the nitrogen budget of the plant they must have the assistance of the mycorrhizal fungi.  It's much more efficient for a plant to uptake amino acids whose molecules include nitrogen needed to build tissues than to uptake just nitrogen minus the amino acid. ...