Do any of you grow Sea Berry, AKA Sea Buckthorn? I generally avoid planting thorny plants and will hack them down, when present. If you grow it:

How bad are the thorns?

Is there much danger of it spreading?

Is it worth growing?

How's the taste?

What do you make with it?

Keith

We have mors from it almost in all stores (the flavor is almost too intense and saturated for pure juice), it's also sold frozen along with cranberries, lingonberries and strawberries. Makes great vivid orange jello, too. The oil from the seeds is very valuable and has medicinal properties, there is a good market for it and it's sold in all pharmacies. Most people here have oblepikha in their gardens (my old one died and the young one is still too small). The thorns are not a problem, they aren't really sharp or noticable, and rudimental in most culivars.

Thanks Tatiana. I'm not sure what mors is. All I could think of is the Roman version of Thanatos, AKA Death and the Military Operations Research Society, that one of my best friends, who is a human factors engineer, is involved with.

I'm glad to know the thorns aren't that bad. The amount of fruit I've seen on some of the pictures of Sea Berry is impressive.

I have an Ohio Nut Growers Association meeting coming up and I'm hoping to find a member I can get cuttings from. I'm hoping to get che there too, plus a lot of nut scions to graft.

We are going into mushroom season here, with morels being the most popular. I wish I had your expertise in mycology. I only know a tiny fraction of the fungi I come across.

Keith

Mors is a traditional berry drink. Most of our territory is too cold for sweeter fruit, so it's a staple. We ususally use cranberries, lingonberries, oblepikha (sea buckthorn), and sometimes milder-tasting berries such as blueberries or raspberries. You crush the berries (or use a blender, nowadays), cook them briefly in water, strain and serve cold. You can change the amount of added sugar and water; watered-down versions are more refreshing. It's especially good on hot days in the summer.

Oblepikha is very oily, I mentioned the oil. The oil is also bright orange, and it gets into the juice, too, and it's a good thing, but something you have to be aware of because it will form an oily film and a paler foamy layer between the oil and the juice/mors itself. It will also stay cloudy no matter how much you filter it. I tried making a small batch of wine and it was not bad, but also cloudy.




The thorns may not be very annoying, but the berries are a bit tricky to pick compared to other berries, they are very firmly attached to the branches. It takes some practice, and there are different tricks.
Remember that it's dioecious, so you'll need a male plant. Here in our gardens, it's common to have only one male plant for several properties (a typical garden is roughtly 80 x 80 feet).

everything is still frozen here and plenty of snow everywhere, a slow spring.

Thanks Tatiana. The mors looks beautiful. The color is so pleasantly intense. I'll definitely have to plant some.

Do most people in Russia grow named varieties of Sea Berries or just berries from the seeds or wild cuttings?

Do you have the selected varieties of Haskaps, that the University of Saskatchewan has been working on, in Russia or other selected cultivars? I bought and traded for 5 different varieties from a nursery in Michigan a couple of years ago. Are Haskaps common in the wild in your area?

Keith

Yes, there are lots of various cultivars, we have whole big research institutions that run decades-long selection programs.
Just an example of varieties developed by just one of those institutes, located in the Altai republic, adjacent to my region (similar soils, slighlty warmer climate):

http://niilisavenko.org/variets/sbtvar.htm (you can probably use google translate)

Lots of haskaps varieties too, There is none in the wild in my region, but it grows on clearings and along swampy creeks in the taiga belt to the north from here. I didn't know it was cultivated elsewhere. Pretty much all of our blueberry cultivars are imported though.

Similar to Russia, large parts of Canada and the Northern Midwest of the US, have more limited agriculture. There's been a lot of research done recently on cold tolerant, improved varieties of native and non native fruit and nuts. The University of Saskatchewan has been trying to develop better tasting varieties of Haskaps, that are capable of being machine harvested and shipped great distances in a fresh state. Some grocery stores do carry them frozen now. Supposedly, they will be available fresh across the US sometime within the next few years. There is a push to call them Honey Berries here.

A lot of research is also being done on American/European hybrid hazelnuts and hybrid American/Chinese chestnuts too.

Some of the berry species, such as Aronia, Juneberry and American Elderberry, which are native, are becoming popular because of their high levels of antioxidants. Select forms of them are becoming popular too. Pharmacies carry a multitude of Elderberry and Aronia products now, with the popularity skyrocketing starting during Covid.

I discovered a variety of Elderberry I named Remembrance after the dryad in the Hans Christian Andersen story, "The Little Elder Mother", that's showing some promise. Thanks to Beaverpeeler, it's stored in the National Germ Plasm Depository, under that name, with me listed as the discoverer.

I wonder how hard it is to import plants from Russia?

I've exported hundreds of pigeons out of the US, mostly Parlor Rollers, but have never tried to bring anything in. Because I would have to have all the birds on site tested, which would be prohibitively expensive, I always shipped the pigeons to an exporter in Oklahoma, who did all the testing and paperwork.

Beaverpeeler has a laboratory make bacteria and virus free clones of Elderberry, with heat treated tissue cultures. I suspect international trade of similarly treated plants, with high potential to go commercial, could be very profitable.

Keith