Russian olive is not a native of Russia: its motherland is the Caucasus and Central Asia, though it used to be commonly planted in the European Russian forest-steppe belt as a gully fixer and nectariferous plant. Known to be invasive in a few East Coast states, Russian olive has not been claiming any land in Massachusetts, or at least not in eastern MA today. Those few persisting/cultivated old plantings that we have observed in the eastern part of state were at the ocean front: in Weymouth and Marblehead.