Shrub offers a sweet but deadly fragrance

VIRGINIA BEACH

This time of year, it’s hard to walk down the feeder road here at the Beach without being caught short by an intensely sweet aroma that wafts from pockets of older vegetation.

This fragrance that some would go so far as to call obnoxious fills the air like honeysuckle or sweet autumn clematis, only more so.

You can search for the source and not find it because the blooms of elaeagnus, or sweet olive, are tiny things that hang below the branch and behind the foliage of the big, ebullient shrub with long, arching branches.

The blooms are smaller than your little fingernail, yet they pack a powerful punch.

It’s easier to find the foliage than the blooms. The leaves are plain and green on top. Underneath, though, they’re a pretty silvery color.

If you reach in to look at elaeagnus more closely, you may even feel like thorns attacked you. Though it is sometimes called thorny elaeagnus, the shrub doesn’t have real thorns. It’s just that its early twigs emerge on branches as tiny, stiff-pointed sticks that might be considered weaponlike.

Years ago elaeagnus, a native of China and Japan, was used as a landscape plant on a regular basis. A hardy shrub, it could grow in areas where other plants could not live, said Susan French, Virginia Beach city arborist.

Elaeagnus, which appears to grow with abandonment into big mounds of silver and green foliage, was used by homeowners as a landscaping plant. It also was used as a windbreak, and even to prevent erosion at abandoned mines, because it was so hardy, French wrote.

For years, elaeagnus also was used as a highway median plant in the Southeast. Because it grew in such a dense way, it was an effective divider between opposing traffic lanes and was no trouble to maintain because it was drought- and heat-resistant.

But in time its hardiness became its downfall. Elaeagnus grew so well that it came to be considered somewhat invasive. Here at the Beach it grows right along with natives, such as yaupon holly and wax myrtle, in hedgerows and other vegetation that has grown up over the years along streets and in between older yards.

“Yes, elaeagnus is out of favor now since it shades and crowds out native species,” French said. “I love the scent, too, though.”

Sadly, the elaeagnus along highway medians has proved to be a real problem for migrating flocks of birds, particularly cedar waxwings, that swoop in to dine on the little red fruits produced in spring by the tiny blooms. Many are hit by speeding cars.

A study of elaeagnus in the highway median near Williamsburg by Brian D. Watts with the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary 10 years ago showed the plant to be deadly for birds. More than 1,200 died along the roadway in one four-day period, among other statistics.

On the other hand, the very late bloom of elaeagnus also proved to be perhaps a lifesaver to a small hummingbird that spent a good part of a very cold December at the Oceanfront.

The little bird roosted in the interior of a big, robust elaeagnus bush and dined on the nectar of the tiny blooms as well. I’m sure the hummer also got protein from insects that also supped on the blooms.

Though the shrub is in disfavor these days, it’s so hardy that a stray hummer or feeder road walker will surely find the aroma of elaeagnus in surprising places for a long time to come.

Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net