Is Silver Buffaloberry deer resistant?

Be honest about this one: deer do eat it. It made up 15 percent of mule deer summer diets in one Montana study. What saves the shrub is not refusal but armour and recovery — spines up to two inches long, and a complex network of underground stems and rootstocks that puts up new growth faster than anything can strip it.

So plan for the spread rather than the browsing. Connected shrubs can stand twenty feet apart, which means one plant becomes a thicket, and cutting the tops changes nothing because the regrowth comes from below ground. On a boundary or a raw bank that is exactly the behavior you want. In a bed it is a decision you will be undoing for years. It will also take the poorest rocky, sandy or alkaline ground you have, which only makes it more determined.

It is dioecious — male and female flowers on separate plants, both needed for fruit — so a lone shrub will never berry. The red fruit is sour raw and better after a hard frost.