Jeremy Bartlett's LET IT GROW blog

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!” (note 1).

It’s late summer and elderberries, the fruits of the Elder, Sambucus nigra, are ripening in Norfolk’s hedgerows and churchyards (note 2).

Sambucus nigra forms a shrub or small tree and is a member of the Adoxaceae (Moschatel family).

Other British members of the Adoxaceae include three more species of Sambucus (the archaeophyte Danewort, Sambucus ebulus and two other naturalised species), Moschatel, Adoxa moschatellina (which I wrote about back in 2012) and several species of Viburnum, such as Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus) and Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum lantana).

Elder is a great resource for wildlife and elderberries provide autumn food for birds (including Blackbirds, Robins, Song Thrushes, Blackcaps and especially Starlings) and small mammals such as Bank Voles. Elderberries are readily plucked from their stalks and birds can swallow them whole and distribute the seeds in places where they perch or fly over. These include woodland margins, gaps in hedges and forgotten corners, both in the countryside and towns and cities.

Sambucus nigra is tolerant of urban pollution and coastal winds and although it grows best in moist soils it can sometimes be seen growing on old walls or as an epiphyte on trees, such as the crowns of pollarded willows (note 3). Elder is resistant to grazing by rabbits and often occurs in the disturbed soil around rabbit warrens. In woodlands, Elder can persist even in deep shade but grows weak and spindly and has fewer flowers than in a more open, sunny site.

Elders don’t grow to a great age. The oldest specimen in a dune system in the Netherlands was found to be 44 years old but in Britain an Elder 23 – 25 years is regarded as old.

Elder leaves are large and pinnately compound, with five to seven leaflets with serrately toothed margins. They have a strong and distinctive and not particularly pleasant smell when bruised or touched. In “Flora Britannica” Richard Mabey compares the smell to “mice nests” (note 4).

By early November all the berries will normally be gone – along with the leaves, for the Elder is deciduous.

But Sambucus nigra doesn’t spend long without leaves.

Elder buds turn green very early and can open as early as January if the winter is mild and leaves unfurl in early spring (February or March), although the new growth can be damaged by a hard frost.

Elder flowers

Elder bushes are most obvious in late spring and early summer when they’re covered with masses of flowers and I often admire them in the hedgerows I cycle past.

Each umbel is 10–30 cm across and the individual flowers are creamy-coloured, highly scented, and have five petals.

Elderflowers have a delicious, musky scent and attract pollinating beetles, flies and honeybees (note 5).

Thrips (tiny, slender insects in the order Thysanoptera, mostly one millimetre long or less) play a major role in the pollination of Elder flowers.

Elder’s floral scent peaks during the night when young flowers are opening and receptive to pollen. This attracts the thrips , which are rewarded with a safe breeding site and a supply of pollen as a food resource for their developing larvae (note 6).

John Wright describes the unique scent of Elder flowers: “The aroma is that of muscat – glorious, sweet, rich and heady. Indeed it is too heady for some. Many detect a certain sickliness; perhaps even a whiff of cat’s wee” (note 7).

Mixed Opinions

While Richard Mabey describes Elder, Sambucus nigra, as a “mangy, short-lived, opportunist and foul-smelling shrub” (note 4), forager and naturalist John Wright likes the cheerful aspect of “this untidy weed of a plant” (note 7) and describes it as his “desert island tree” for its crops of elderflowers and elderberries (note 8).

They’re both right, of course. Sambucus nigra will never win a prize for its elegance or its towering branches, but its flowers and fruit liven up the countryside and provide sustenance for wildlife and a treat for humans. On the Galloway Wild Foods website, Mark Williams describes Elder as “one of nature’s finest edible treasures “.

Where Elder grows

Elder is a common and widely distributed native plant in the British Isles, growing up to 470 metres above sea level above Nenthead in Cumberland (note 9).

Outside the British Isles, Sambucus nigra is native in much of Europe and the Middle East, as far east as Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Russia and as far south as Spain, Greece and Türkiye.

It has been introduced into Norway, Sweden and Finland and to North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan and Uzbekistan), North America (Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Virginia in the United States and Ontario in Canada), Central America (Mexico), South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the Falkland Islands) and Australia and New Zealand.

Elder is a useful shrub for humans, which explains why it has been introduced into many parts of the world.

Elder toxins

Elder contains toxic compounds: cyanogenic glycosides and lectins.

Cyanogenic glycosides are compounds that are metabolised into cyanide, potentially resulting in cyanide poisoning. The lectins in Elder can cause gastrointestinal distress when eaten. One of the cyanogenic glycosides is sambunigrin, which is absent from Elder flowers and ripe berries.

Leaves, bark and stems contain the highest levels of toxins but the leaves taste bitter and don’t smell very pleasant, so are very unlikely to be eaten by humans.

However, pigs have been known to eat Elder and in one incident, 50 pigs that ate Elder suffered rapid breathing, an accelerated heart rate, trembling and paralysis and 14 of them died (note 12).

In 1983 a party of people in California drank juice made by crushing elderberries and leaves and suffered symptoms of poisoning within 15 minutes. Several had to be flown to hospital by helicopter but all of them recovered quickly (note 12).

Elder flowers

I hope I haven’t put you off using Elder, because its flowers and berries are both delicious!

Elder flowers are safe to eat but the Compound Interest website advises removing the flower stems if the flowers aren’t going to be cooked.

The smell of Elder flowers is complex and due to a cocktail of chemicals, the most significant being cis-rose oxide (also found in roses), hotrienol, nerol oxide, and nonanal. Other compounds that add to the complexity include linalool and alpha-terpineol (giving floral notes), and hexanal and (Z)-3-hexenol (adding a grassy aspect).

Elder flowers can be snipped off in bunches with scissors and used to make elderflower “champagne” (gathering in the early morning on a dry day to capture using the naturally occurring yeasts that will give the drink its fizz). There are lots of recipes online, including this one from Galloway Wild Foods.

Elderflower cordial is readily available in shops and is a deliciously refreshing non-alcoholic drink for a warm day. Again, there are lots of recipes online, such as this one from River Cottage.

The Compound Interest website has a recipe for elderflower syrup.

Other commercially produced drinks include elderflower lemonades. One of my favourites is Cawston Press Elderflower Lemonade.

John Wright suggests making elderflower ice lollies and his “Elderflower Delight” is a lovely version of Turkish delight (note 7). Dried elderflowers can be used to make a sweet tea.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall gives some more delicious suggestions in his “River Cottage Cookbook” and I’ve tried several of them (note 10):

• Elderflower fritters – Elder flowers dipped in batter and deep fried.
• Elderflower sorbet
• Gooseberry and elderflower ice-cream
• Elderflower and gooseberry fool.

(Elderflowers and gooseberries are a delicious, seasonal combination of flavours.)

Elder berries

Raw elderberries contain much lower levels of toxins than the leaves. However, eating “even a few [raw] berries could lead to nausea, vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhoea, weakness and coma” (note 12).

The effects will usually depend on how many raw berries are eaten. On the Galloway Wild Foods website, Mark Williams recounts that when a friend’s children nibbled just a few raw elderberries they suffered no ill effects. But when another friend made raw elderberry smoothies for his family he had to clean up spectacular purple vomit afterwards.

The toxins in elderberries are rendered harmless by cooking and the cyanogenic glycosides are also destroyed by fermentation. Cooked elderberries are edible, rich in vitamins and antioxidants and well worth eating.

Cooked elderberries can be used as an ingredient in summer puddings and combine well with apples in crumbles and pies, cordials, jellies and preserves (note 10).  Elderberry wine is good; we made a batch many years ago and it kept well (due to its high levels of tannins) and was at its best after six months.

The juice is also used to colour other fruit juices. The purple-black colour of the berries and their juice is due to the presence of anthocyanins, the most abundant being cyanidin 3-sambubioside.

The BBC Food website gives more options for using elderflowers and elderberries, as does the Totally Wild website. Elderberries can also be used to flavour gin.

Other uses of Elder

Although hardly a forest tree, timber from larger diameter Elder plants is hard, smooth and yellowish-white, with a fine, close grain. Watchmakers used it for the tiny parts of watches and some children’s toys and the pith (from the centre of young branches) was used to make fishing floats and as a non-conductive material in early electrical experiments. Children used hollowed out Elder stems to make whistles and pea-shooters (note 3). The ammunition for toy guns made from hollow Elder stems could be the small, hard seeds of Cleavers, Galium aparine, or elderberries. The latter “make a satisfactory bloody splodge” (note 4).

Elder pith is useful when cutting thin sections of plant material. I used it in Botany practicals at university and I still have some.

As a live shrub, Elder can be a liability in hedges, as it snaps easily and is fairly short-lived, leaving a gap when it is dead. It can also kill other trees around it. But its wood is slow to rot and so Elder stakes can be used for fencing (note 8). Elder’s root and heartwood are “as hard as Ebony”, even if its young branches are hollow and weak (note 4).

To deter flies on their cattle, drovers used to cut Elder branches to make switches and Flora Britannica includes an account of a farmer using the pungent leaves on the head bands of his working horses to keep flies away (note 4). The leaves and berries have also been used to make green, blue and purple dyes.

The Plants for a Future website lists a number of medicinal uses for Elder, using every part of the plant (but, as the website says: “Always seek advice from a professional before using a plant medicinally”):

The inner bark was gathered in the autumn, sun-dried and used as a diuretic, a strong purgative and (in large doses) emetic. The green inner bark was used to make an emollient ointment. The leaves (which are poisonous like the fruit when raw) were used as a purgative and an emollient ointment made from the leaves was used in the treatment of bruises, sprains, chilblains and wounds. Infusions of dried flowers were used to treat chest complaints and inflamed eyes and as a blood cleanser. The pith of young stems was used to treat burns and scalds and the root as an emetic and purgative.

Elder was also thought to have magical properties and it was believed that it would keep the Devil away if grown next to a house. If you burned it you would see the Devil (note 4).

Names

The genus name Sambucus is said to be derived from the Latin sambuca, the name of a stringed musical instrument, like a harp. The specific name nigra (‘black’) refers to the colour of ripe elderberries.

The English name ‘Elder’ is probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon word aeld, meaning ‘kindle’, linked to Elder’s use in lighting fires, either by using the pith as a kindling or using the hollow stems as a pipe to blow air onto a fire to boost the flames (note 11).

Elder in the garden

Sambucus nigra makes an attractive garden shrub, in sun or semi-shade in any aspect. The near-mythical “moist but well-drained soil” suits it well and it is easy to grow in moderately fertile, humus-rich soils and also thrives on extremely chalky sites. In the British Isles, Elder has a hardiness rating of H6 (“hardy in all of UK and northern Europe (-20 to -15 Celsius)”. The shrub will start to flower in its third or fourth year of growth and it will reach a mature size of 4 – 8 metres tall and 2.5 – 4 metres spread in 10 – 20 years. You need to have enough space in your garden but Elder will tolerate hard pruning to restrict its size. If you want more plants, you can propagate them from softwood or hardwood cuttings.

There are lots of fancier Elders if you would like a different colour or leaf shape and the Gardens Illustrated website describes some of them. I’ve often seen the dark purple ‘Black Lace’ in nurseries and other varieties with dark purple leaves include ‘Eva’, ‘Chocolate Marzipan’ and ‘Thundercloud’. The related Sambucus racemosa has a pretty variety with golden foliage and red berries, ‘Sutherland Gold’. There’s even the variegated ‘Aureomarginata’  if you insist on that sort of thing.

Other wildlife

Sambucus nigra provides an excellent habitat for other invertebrates, including dense colonies of the Elder Aphid, Aphis sambuci.

These aphids are usually dark green to dark grey and form dense colonies on Elder stems in spring, where they suck the sap. They use docks (Rumex) and campions (Silene) as their secondary hosts. Ants farm the aphids for their honeydew and protect them from predators. Hoverfly and ladybird larvae will feed on the aphids but the 7-Spot Ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) avoids Elder except just after overwintering, because of the toxins it contains.

Around a dozen species of moths feed on Elder. These include the Swallow-tailed Moth, Ourapteryx sambucaria and the Elder Pearl moth, Anania coronata. The Swallow-tailed Moth also feeds on other woody shrubs such as Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) and Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) and Ivy (Hedera helix). Anania coronata feeds mainly on Elder (but the Norfolk Moths website also mentions bindweeds as a foodplant).

Fungi

The Jelly Ear, Auricularia auricula-judae, often grows on Elder, but can be found on other dead wood too. The big Tree Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca, at the end of our garden died a few winters ago and its woody stems have hosted a good crop of Jelly Ears in the last couple of winters.

More specific to Elder is a white fungus that coats the lower trunk and branches, looking “as though someone has inexpertly coated the elder branches with whitewash” (note 8). The fungus is Hyphodontia sambuci and its English name is Elder Whitewash. It is common in England, Wales, southern and central Scotland, with fewer records from northern Scotland and Ireland (FRDBI, login required).

Notes

Note 1 – I couldn’t resist! I just had to include this quote from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail“.

Note 2 – In botanical terminology, each elderberry is a drupe, with an outer fleshy part surrounding a single small stone containing the seed.

Note 3 -Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet, pages 278 – 281 in “The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century”. Bloomsbury, 2021.

Note 4 – Richard Mabey, pages 342 – 345 in “Flora Britannica”. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996.

Note 5 – There has been a lot of research into the chemical composition of Sambucus nigra flowers. Some recent papers include:

• Rutkowska, J., Godlewska, M., Antoniewska-Krzeska, A. , Nawirska-Olsza?ska, A. “Phenolic composition, volatile profile, and in vitro antioxidative potential of hydroethanolic flower extracts of Sambucus nigra L. as a valuable food ingredient”. NFS Journal, Vol. 41,100248.
• Qazimi B, Stanoeva JP, Cvetanoska M, Geskovski N, Dragusha S, Koraqi H, Qazimi V, Ejupi V (2024). “Phenolic Compound Composition of Sambucus nigra L. Wild-Growing Plants from Kosovo.” Turk J Pharm Sci. Vol 20 (6): pp380-389.
• Ferreira-Santos P, Badim H, Salvador ÂC, Silvestre AJD, Santos SAO, Rocha SM, Sousa AM, Pereira MO, Wilson CP, Rocha CMR, Teixeira JA, Botelho CM (2021). “Chemical Characterization of Sambucus nigra L. Flowers Aqueous Extract and Its Biological Implications”. Biomolecules. Vol. 17;11(8):p 1222.

Note 6 – From “Elder power” by Alison Scott-Brown and Kim Walker, 28th May 2019. The main work referenced is Scott-Brown, A.S., Arnold, S.E.J., Kite, G.C., Farrell, I.W., Farman, D.I., Collins, D.W. & Stevenson, P.C. (2019). Mechanisms in mutualisms: a chemically mediated thrips pollination strategy in common elder. Planta DOI: 10.1007/s00425-019-03176-5.

Note 7 – John Wright, pages 131 – 134 in “Hedgerow”. River Cottage Handbook No. 7, Bloomsbury, 2010.

Note 8 – John Wright, pages 188 – 190 in “A Natural History of the Hedgerow”. Profile Books, 2017.

Note 9 – The BSBI account of Sambucus nigra for County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, says it is “a possible archaeophyte introduction” – i.e. introduced by humans, either intentionally or unintentionally, becoming naturalised between the start of the Neolithic period and AD 1500.

The BSBI 2020 Plant Atlas says: “It may have been introduced at some sites, and is mapped as such in northern Scotland where it is often restricted to the vicinity of human settlements; elsewhere, it is often impossible to distinguish native and alien occurrences, especially as it may spread naturally by bird-sown seeds.”

Note 10 – Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, “The River Cottage Cookbook”. Harper Collins Illustrated, 2001.

Note 11 – John E. Stevens, page 21 in “Discovering Wild Plant Names”. Shire Publications, 1973.

Note 12 – From page 33 of “Poisonous Plants and Fungi – An Illustrated Guide” by Marion Cooper and Anthony Johnson, HMSO, 1994.

The Eatweeds website has some useful Elder Safety Notes.

The concentration of toxins in Elder also varies with growing conditions. One study found that elderberries from higher altitudes can contain more cyanogenic glycosides than those from lower altitudes:

• Senica, M., Stampar, F., Veberic, R. and Mikulic-Petkovsek, M. (2017), The higher the better? Differences in phenolics and cyanogenic glycosides in Sambucus nigra leaves, flowers and berries from different altitudes. J. Sci. Food Agric., 97: 2623-2632. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.8085.

We should be fairly safe in Norfolk.