Background

The silver buffaloberry shrub has a long and well-established presence in the middle and western portions of the United States of America and Canada. The buffaloberry is named as such because Native American tribes often used the berries as a sauce or seasoning when eating buffalo meat. Additionally, the buffalo would sometimes rub against the thorny bushes to shed their winter coats. A specimen of the silver buffaloberry was first collected for scientific examination by Meriwether Lewis in 1804 along the Missouri River in Nebraska. One has to wonder if the specimen also contained buffalo fur.

This thorny silver shrub provides ideal cover and nesting sites for many birds. It is a preferred food source of many songbirds and sharp-tailed grouse. Seeds of the shrub are dispersed in the droppings of birds and ungulates, but sprouting of the seeds seems to occur very rarely in nature. It is also a browse source for big game animals, as well as rodents.
The shrub is suitable for the outside rows of multi-row windbreak belts. In a single-row planting, it forms a low, dense barrier. Windbreaks are widely used in the plains states to slow the wind and provide a more beneficial condition for soils, crops, livestock, wildlife and people.

Characteristics

Silver buffaloberry is a deciduous, thorny, mound-shaped shrub, 3-20 feet tall, which mostly forms thickets but can sometimes become nearly tree-like. It is drought-hardy and winter-hardy, enjoys full sun and can grow in most soils that have good drainage. Twigs are spiny and silvery gray. Foliage is also silvery-gray. As the shrub matures, the thin bark becomes grayish-brown and starts to peel.
On the female shrub, dull yellowish inconspicuous flowers (⅛ to ¼ inch across) precede a football-shaped berry that is red, orange or yellow. On the male shrub the flowers are larger and bright yellow. The flowers on both male and female shrubs are tubular with a four lobed calyx that is crowded in the bud axils of the short branches. In the center of the male flower is a ring of eight yellow nectary glands. The berry produced on the female shrub contains a single seed. It is estimated that a single female shrub can produce 10,000 seeds.