We’re partnering with Sierra Club, High Country Audubon, and High Country Wild to care for our public land. In this workday, we’ll focus on removing nonnative Autumn Olive, Multiflora Rose, and Bittersweet at the upper loop of Brookshire Park.

This time of year, Autumn Olive and Multiflora Rose are fruiting, both of which have beneficial and medicinal fruit uses. Autumn Olive fruits can be eaten or made into fruit leather. The berries are rich in many vitamins and minerals and have 17x more lycopene than tomatoes. When eating the fruits, do not spit out the seeds as we want to prevent spread from the fruit.

Multiflora Rose has fruits called reships. These can be harvested and eaten or made into tea or dried and soaked in oil for skin nourishment. Again do not spit seeds on the ground as we want to prevent this plant from spreading.

Because these plants are nonnative, they can be harvested without any worry of overharvesting.

We encourage harvesting the fruit as we cut and remove the plant from the landscape.