Early-Bearing Trees & Shrubs

Native trees and shrubs that bear their first crop two to five years from seed.

We grow thirty-eight trees and shrubs that bear fruit, nuts, acorns or cones early, two to five years from seed. Twenty-six are shrubs, among them black elderberry, American hazelnut and beach plum. The trees run from Chickasaw plum and flatwoods plum to pin cherry and Nuttall oak. Most need a second plant, or a male among the females, before they bear, and the pollination planner says which. Why a tree flowers but bears no fruit covers what else can keep a plant from bearing.