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Odocoileus virginianus

Deer take juniper cones, but Missouri Botanical Garden lists creeping juniper as deer-tolerant - meaning the resinous prickly foliage is poor browse and the plant survives pressure that destroys most low evergreens. That deer tolerance is one of the honest reasons it is planted so widely.

Deer take the fruit, though Missouri Botanical Garden lists inkberry as deer-tolerant - meaning the plant is not preferred browse and survives deer pressure that flattens other evergreens.

Missouri Botanical Garden lists deer among the animals attracted by the persistent berries, while the Wildflower Center rates the plant only moderately deer-resistant - so expect browse pressure on a young plant. The animal the shrub is actually named for, the Virginia opossum, eats the fruit alongside raccoons and other small mammals; it does not yet have its own entry in this catalog.

White-tailed deer were heavy consumers of fallen chestnuts, which once provided a dependable annual mast crop every fall - unlike oaks, chestnut bore reliably year to year. The blight's elimination of that mast is a documented loss to eastern wildlife forage; deer browse the foliage of young sprouts as well.

Deer take juniper cones, but Missouri Botanical Garden lists creeping juniper as deer-tolerant - meaning the resinous prickly foliage is poor browse and the plant survives pressure that destroys most low evergreens. That deer tolerance is one of the honest reasons it is planted so widely.

Deer take the fruit, though Missouri Botanical Garden lists inkberry as deer-tolerant - meaning the plant is not preferred browse and survives deer pressure that flattens other evergreens.

Missouri Botanical Garden lists deer among the animals attracted by the persistent berries, while the Wildflower Center rates the plant only moderately deer-resistant - so expect browse pressure on a young plant. The animal the shrub is actually named for, the Virginia opossum, eats the fruit alongside raccoons and other small mammals; it does not yet have its own entry in this catalog.

White-tailed deer were heavy consumers of fallen chestnuts, which once provided a dependable annual mast crop every fall - unlike oaks, chestnut bore reliably year to year. The blight's elimination of that mast is a documented loss to eastern wildlife forage; deer browse the foliage of young sprouts as well.

Deer browse fallen acorns through autumn and winter. Red-group acorns are more tannic and less preferred than white-oak mast, so they tend to be eaten later in the season once the sweeter acorns are gone - which makes them a useful late-winter resource.

Deer strongly prefer white-group acorns for their lower tannin, and chestnut oak mast is taken early and heavily. In the Appalachians it is one of the defining autumn food resources.

Deer prefer white-group acorns for their low tannin, and chinkapin oak mast is taken early in the autumn drop.

White-tailed deer feed heavily on fallen oak acorns through fall and winter; pin oak contributes to the eastern-forest mast that drives deer foraging. (Note the flip side: the same tannins make the acorns and foliage toxic to horses and livestock in quantity.)

Deer prefer low-tannin white-group acorns, and post oak mast is taken early in the drop. Across the Cross Timbers it is one of the defining autumn food resources.

Deer browse the fallen acorns heavily in fall and winter; oak mast is a major component of their cold-season diet.

Deer feed on the September-to-October acorn drop. Southern red oak is a substantial contributor to the upland mast crop across the Southeast.

Deer strongly prefer white-group acorns for their lower tannin content, and swamp white oak is a favoured autumn mast source across its range.

Deer feed on fallen acorns through autumn and winter; willow oak contributes to the bottomland mast crop that drives deer foraging across the Southeast.

The Wildflower Center is blunt that balsam fir is heavily browsed by deer, and browsing shapes whole stands: a heavily browsed regeneration layer comes back as a hedge of stunted trees rather than a cohort of saplings. Moose lean on it even harder in winter, when fir foliage is one of the few things available above the snow, though moose have no entry in this catalog and are named here rather than wired.

Deer may browse the foliage of young plants, though the strongly aromatic, oil-rich leaves make California bay far less preferred than many other trees; browse pressure is generally light and the strong scent often deters it.

This is a threat entry, not an amenity one. Wikipedia records heavy white-tailed deer browsing as a population pressure on Canada lily in developed landscapes, and the damage is disproportionate because the plant is a single unbranched stem with terminal flowers - one bite removes the entire season's reproduction and the leaf area that would have recharged the bulb. Repeated browse kills established bulbs outright. In deer country this species needs a fence or a cage, not repellent. The defining modern INSECT pest, the lily leaf beetle Lilioceris lilii, has no entry in this catalog and so is named here in prose rather than wired as a relationship: it is a Eurasian chrysomelid present in North America since 1943, now recorded across nine provinces and fourteen states, and Utah State University Extension and the Native Plant Trust both flag it as feeding on native Lilium including this one.

Deer will browse the soft foliage of young deodar cedars, especially in hard winters when other forage is scarce; browse pressure can damage young trees enough to warrant protection during establishment, though mature trees are largely out of reach.

Lilies are among the plants deer seek out rather than merely tolerate, and they take the buds and the top of the stem, which removes the entire year's flowering in one visit and leaves the bulb to start again. Assume a lily planting in deer country needs a fence rather than a repellent. Two other important garden animals have no entry in this catalog and are named here instead of being wired: the LILY LEAF BEETLE (Lilioceris lilii), the scarlet beetle whose frass-shielded larvae are now the defining pest of garden lilies across northeastern North America, and voles, which eat the scaly bulbs underground over winter and are the usual explanation for a bulb that never reappears in a bed that drains perfectly well.

White-tailed deer browse the foliage of young Florida torreya, and deer browsing is recognized as one of the pressures on the species' few resprouting plants in its native range; young plants in cultivation generally need protection where deer are present.

Deer browse the soft, broad foliage where populations are high; graded plausible as a general browse rather than a documented preference.

Two sources agree that this grass gets eaten: the Wildflower Center rates deer resistance as minimal and lists it as good forage for wildlife, and Wikipedia calls it nutritious and preferred forage for wild and domestic animals. The relationship is marked plausible rather than documented for a geographic reason worth being explicit about - across most of the mapped range the large grazers are mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep and cattle rather than white-tailed deer, and none of those has an entry in this wildlife catalog. Read this row as the browsing pressure the plant is under generally, wired to the one large herbivore the catalog carries.

The Wildflower Center lists Browse among the wildlife uses and Wikipedia records deer among the animals that eat the fruit. This is not a deer-resistant plant, and neither cited source claims it is - which matters more here than for a tall viburnum, because the whole plant sits inside browse height. In heavy-deer woodland a new planting needs protection for its first years, and a long-browsed colony stays low and thin rather than filling out.

Worth knowing rather than assuming. Missouri Botanical Garden lists only urban conditions under Tolerate for this species and does not list deer, which is a meaningful contrast with the native shrubs whose records do, and no source consulted here rates its palatability either way. Absence from a tolerance list is not proof of browsing, but on unfenced ground it is a reason to protect a young plant rather than to gamble on it.

White-tailed deer browse Norway spruce foliage, especially on young plants and in hard winters, and also shelter in dense plantings for thermal cover; deer pressure can damage young trees enough to warrant protection during establishment.

This one carries a source conflict worth surfacing rather than smoothing over. Missouri Botanical Garden lists Deer under Tolerate, meaning it rates the plant as deer-resistant. Wikipedia records the foliage as eaten by deer, beaver and rabbits. Both can be true: an established plant with its growth above browse height tolerates deer well, and a newly planted whip of 3 feet in a high-pressure area does not. Protect it for the first few seasons and then stop worrying, and do not read MBG's tolerance rating as a guarantee on a young plant.

Wikipedia records that deer browse the foliage, and deer does NOT appear on the Missouri Botanical Garden tolerance list for this species, which carries wet soil alone. Treat that as a design constraint on unfenced rural ground: young plants are the vulnerable ones, and a shrub browsed back each spring never reaches the height at which the fruit display reads.

Listed by Missouri Botanical Garden under Tolerates: Deer, and the needles are the reason - they are genuinely sharp, so deer leave it alone. Its wildlife value here is structural rather than nutritional: common juniper still holds low evergreen cover on ground where deer pressure has stripped every palatable shrub out.

Dense hemlock stands are classic winter 'deer yards' across the northeastern range, providing thermal cover and reduced snow depth; white-tailed deer also browse hemlock foliage, especially in hard winters, sometimes heavily enough to limit regeneration.

Dense young jack pine gives thermal and escape cover on open sand plains that offer little else. The value is structural; the foliage is poor browse.

Deer browse loblolly seedlings only lightly, but dense young stands are heavily used as thermal and escape cover across the Southeast. The value here is structure rather than food.

Deer make heavy use of dense conifer stands as winter thermal cover in the north, where snow depth under the canopy is lower and wind is broken. Red pine contributes structure rather than browse; the foliage is not preferred food.

The value here is cover, not food. Rocky Mountain juniper is listed as deer-tolerant, meaning deer do not prefer to browse it, and that is precisely why a windbreak or shelterbelt of it survives to become winter thermal cover where more palatable evergreens are eaten out.

Plotwright. (n.d.). White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Retrieved 2026, August 20, from https://plotwright.com/wildlife/white-tailed-deer