Autumn olive is a good nitrogen fixer for a fruit tree plant team.
This claim doesn’t hold up. Refuted A person has checked it against its sources.
The planner won’t plan around this claim. What is known instead is below.
What is actually known
It fixes nitrogen. It is also bird-dispersed, forms dense thickets, and is listed as invasive or noxious across much of the eastern and midwestern US.
What to do about it
Autumn olive will escape your yard. Use white clover, wild lupine, or a native fixer, and check your state noxious weed list before planting any woody nitrogen fixer.
The evidence
Evidence: checked against 2 sources in the research-based literature.
The 2 sources
This plant is an invasive species in North Carolina
Seeds are dispersed by frugivorous birds
Plants it applies to · 1
Read next
How this rule has changed
Every change is dated, newest first. The full record, with each reason, is in the data download.
- Sources updated
- Wording made clearer
- Advice on what to do added
- A person read the sources and confirmed it
- Added to the rules
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Cite this page
Milpa Gardens. “Autumn olive is a good nitrogen fixer for a fruit tree plant team.” Evidence grade: Refuted. https://milpa.garden/rules/autumn-olive-good-nitrogen-fixer-fruit-tree/
A garden planner built on graded evidence. Every claim states its evidence grade and links its sources on the page. Cite it with the grade, and add the date you read it.
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How we grade evidence
- Well established
- The rule names its mechanism and is settled, by sources a person has read and checked or by plain arithmetic and geometry.
- Promising
- The mechanism is named and the literature backs it. A few questions are still open.
- A good hunch
- Plausible by its mechanism, but field studies are thin, so treat it as a lean.
- Contested
- The evidence points both ways, or no study has tested it, so the planner does not enforce it.
- Refuted
- The claim did not survive its sources. It is kept so the folklore can be answered.