It is native in northern Mexico in the Sierra Madre Occidental cordillera, and mountainous, desert regions of the Southwestern United States of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and far west Texas; besides being found in Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango of the Occidental cordillera, a large species locale occurs to the east in Nuevo León.
[1] Frangula betulifolia has large ovate leaves, and can grow to be a small tree from 3-10m tall.
[3] The core range of the birchleaf buckthorn is the northern Sierra Madre Occidental cordillera, from central Durango, north to west-southwest Chihuahua, and eastern Sonora; it also ranges just north at the Arizona-New Mexico, Sonora-Chihuahua borders,[1] a region called the Madrean Sky Islands, of sky island mountain ranges.
Other medium-sized range locales occur at: central, southwest New Mexico, (an extension east from the Mogollon Rim–White Mountains of the Arizona transition zone); the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River with the range extending upriver into the Canyon Lands of southeast Utah; western Texas; and southern Nuevo León.
[1] Various songbirds and small mammals consume the berries, which are edible but unpalatable, and deer and bighorn sheep browse the foliage.