Otherwise known as seaberry, or sea buckthorn, this plant is useful for many purposes and grows well in a variety of weather and soil types. Not only does this plant produce nutritious berries which are quickly becoming popular as a sports drink ingredient and seed oil which is already popular in areas where it is indigenous, it is also useful for mitigating erosion and for improving soils that have high salt content and/or poor nutrient content.
Wild varieties have a tendency to sucker. Cultivated varieties produce higher quantities of better quality berries and generally do not sucker.
Our interest in this plant is not for it's production of berries. We intend to produce a male only strain of this plant for decorative purposes. Our current experiments show this plant to have decorative qualities as well as drought resistance, making it an excellent candidate for cultivation as a landscape plant in California.
Male only plants are only capable of reproducing via runner and are genetically unable to produce berries, so that the plants could be called, berryless seaberry plants. They are also an excellent livestock fodder that grows under near-desert conditions. Plants of this type could be capable of mitigating chemically polluted environments by locking up minerals in the soil, reducing long-term run-off into local water sources and gradually producing top-soil. The dense foliage that is produced on these salt-tolerant plants is useful in many different ways.
Additionally, seaberry is a nitrogen fixating plant, increasing the fertility of the soil with symbiotic bacteria that make nitrogen more available to plants.
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