Elderberry: Sambucus nigra or S. Canadensis

Want to learn more about using elderberry? Let's start off with a little poem, and then we'll dive into the basics of elderberry use.

Honoring Elderberry

Elderberry is a magician. A woman who can bend herself in mysterious ways so that when you look at her you see something different each time. Something new. Something old. She slips into hiding or she comes right out and smiles at you.

The Woman in the Elder demands respect. She is like your second grade teacher, the one with the beehive hair-do and the big bosom who snapped her ruler down on the desk when the students misbehaved. The Woman in the Elder is like an astronaut: she’s willing to go where no one else will go. She demands admiration. She is the fortune-teller, but she is also the fortune.

Find her, and you’ve found one of the great secrets of the universe. She will provide, if you will provide. Many people think she demands sacrifices to her, or that you must somehow atone for using her. But she says no. She says you must pass along her knowledge and use her and share her. That’s your duty in exchange for the privilege of using Elder. Share her.

She wants her flowers to be used for children. She wants animals to learn of her leaves. She wants people to enjoy her berries but also to look deeper and realize what worth they have. She wants her bark to carry ships across the waters and her music across the air. 

She desires to be everywhere at once.

Antiviral Elder

The lovely tree Elderberry is high on my list for most useful plants, and for good reason. Of hundreds of beneficial plants, I turn to time-and-again to elder during cold and flu season. Elder is renowned for its immune strengthening antiviral abilities and for its capacity to give a person a measure of protection against bacterial and viral infections.

With centuries of history behind it, Elderberry harbors the spirit of a woman, according to our grandmothers of yore. This fairy woman is somehow kindly and helpful, but most often she demands respect from anyone wishing to harvest the elder fruit. Cultures across ancient Europe, Ireland and Scotland used to bring offerings to the Elder woman, or Hulda mutter, in return for the privilege of harvesting berries and flowers. 

Harvesting Elderberry

Elder trees grow all along the U.S. Eastern seaboard, but be careful you don't confuse them with the viburnum that bloom at the same time. These flowers look similar to elder, but a viburnum blossom is much more compact than a loose elder blossom, and by checking the leaves you'll see a marked difference, too. An Elder tree has long, pointy and serrated leaves while a viburnum's are rounded and squat.

Elder flowers are a creamy color and blossom in the late spring/early summer here on Martha's Vineyard. Elder flowers are known for lowering fever, especially in children. They also make a lovely light-colored syrup; both the syrup and tincture are used widely by herbalists to treat the common cold, influenza, upper respiratory congestion, hayfever and sinusitis. The deep purple berries are profuse in autumn and are easily gathered as long as you can reach them. The berries grow in clumps and can be snipped off (after requesting permission from the Elder Woman!) and tinctured, dried, frozen, or cooked; in fact, they must be cooked or dried, as raw berries taste rank and unpleasant. The berries also make a wonderful cordial, liqueur, or wine.

Be sure to experiment with all the ways to use elder berry, leaf and flower:

Elder berry: in syrups, teas, decoctions, rinses, honeys, oxymels

Elder flower: in cordials, teas, infusions, rinses, ice cubes, oils, salves, foods, smoothies, powders, honeys, oxymels

Elder leaf: in oils, salves/ointments (do not take the leaf internally)

Excerpted from Holly's The Essential Herbal for Natural Health and The Healing Kitchen

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