Some serious pruning

We have a large bush in our southern hedge, a bush with leathery green, oval leaves, a bush which is getting too big and difficult to prune. Which is a problem, as it is quite vigorous.

Then a day or so ago, I suddenly decided that some restoration pruning was needed. That is to say cutting our side back pretty drastically and then taking the top off. The idea being that the other side is left and keeps things going while our side shoots back over the year to come - and will have hardened off enough by the winter that follows.

So yesterday morning I cut back our side and I am now pondering about how best to tackle the top. Quite a lot of dead wood in the interior. Plus a substantial bramble shoot, maybe a centimetre in diameter, which had somehow managed to grow up through the bush, despite the lack of light. BH thought she had seen the top of it waving around above.

The bush has small white flowers in the angles formed by leaves and shoots, flowers with a curious but not unpleasant smell. Flowers which I discovered yesterday morning can ripen into small red fruits, about the size of a blackcurrant, but less spherical. Which prompted us this morning to wonder what on earth our shrub was.

Our various garden wizard books did not help, so I tried asking Bing (or perhaps Google) for shrubs with leathery green leaves. This turned up lots of pictures of same and having been led up the garden path by Correa alba from Australia, I settled on Elaeagnus × ebbingei from Japan and Korea.

Possibly also known as oleaster or silverberry.

Interesting how getting the right search key then scanning lots of pictures on the computer was the way to do it in this case. Much better than scanning the pictures in the garden wizard books and much easier than attempting to use a identification key, most of which depend on detailed knowledge of the plant in question. Preferably with shoots, leaves, flowers and fruits all to hand for inspection. Preferably backed up with a working knowledge of botanical vocabulary.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaeagnus.

Reference 2: https://www.hedgesdirect.co.uk/acatalog/oleaster-elaeagnus-x-ebbingei.html.