Genetic diversity is a prerequisite for plant adaptation and maintenance of a sustainable ecosystem. Not much information is available on the genetic diversity of woody species on the semi-arid Canadian prairies. We used RAPD fragments to assess the diversity of four woody species of the Elaeagnaceae family, sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.), Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia L.), buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea Nutt.) and silverberry (Elaeagnus commutata Bernh. Ex Rydb.) collected from several locations in southwestern Saskatchewan. The RAPD fragments were used to generate molecular data for this experiment. Of the total scorable RAPD fragments, 86, 80, 55.2, and 36.5% were polymorphic in sea buckthorn, buffaloberry, silverberry and Russian olive, respectively. Estimates of phenotypic diversity by AMOVA and Shanon's information index revealed that buffaloberry and sea buckthorn had relatively high phenotypic diversity and Russian olive had low phenotypic diversity. Key words: Sea buckthorn, silverberry, buffaloberry, Russian olive, RAPD, phenotypic diversity, Hippophae, Elaeagnus, Shepherdia