Eleagnus angustifolia also known as the Russian Olive or Siberian Olive is an edible plant brought to North America from Europe. I had bought the seeds years ago, which I purchased from Seedrack.com . The seed where easy to plant and grow. The trees grew fast even in my Zone 2-3 Climate. When I bought the seeds I had heard that the fruit is edible and jam could be made from it.
After searching for recopies once the trees grew bigger I was disappointed to not find any, or the ones I did find described a different fruit... red in color. I was able to figure out where the confusion stems. There are parts of the USA where a plant called Autumn Olive grows with red berries. In some of these areas people mistakenly call them Russian Olive. To make matters more complicated the Russian Olive is actually edible!
When eating the fruit it has a mealy texture and a squash like flavor. Since it is not used as a normal food source I could not find any recipes in my search. However I did find a footnote in a USDA paper about the invasive qualities stating that in the past Natives and Pioneers had sometimes cooked the fruit in moose fat.
So I decided since I went through the effort of growing this tree, I would now cook and eat it's fruit :-)
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