The Elder

By Alison Brooke

 

According to many sources, the “flowers of June” are the rose and the honeysuckle, both of them lovely in their own right and capable of bestowing upon their immediate environment both beauty and scent.  However, June is the most fortunate of months because there is yet another hedgerow plant whose flower also carries those attributes – the Elder – and it could be said to be the most useful of all in terms of its culinary and medicinal properties.

The Elder is a native plant to the UK and much of Europe, and is a familiar part of our hedgerows. Once the beautiful white or pink-edged flowers of the hawthorn have started to fade, the frothy white umbels of the Elder begin to come to the fore, and towards the end of long sunny days it is their scent that permeates the air. This is indeed the time to pick them if you wish to make delicious elderflower champagne, sorbet, lemonade cake, cheesecake, fritters, tea or cordial.  There’s no need to wash them either, as they carry their own yeast in the pollen, to aid the culinary process. Not everyone however, is a fan of the flavour of elderflower.

“It doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference how much sugar or yeast you add to the vegetable brew; it doesn’t matter whether you use mangold-wurzels or elderflowers (which make a wine that tastes like hair oil…” 

(John Moore “This Nonsense about Home-Made Wine” in ‘A Pocketful of Acorns’)

 

 

There are fewer recipes that use the berries, but then they, like the bark, stems, leaves and root of the plant are slightly poisonous when uncooked.  However, the liqueur Sambuca is made using the berries, and it is also possible to create an elderberry vinegar.

Medicinally many of the less appetising qualities of the elder have been put to good use and it appears that both early and modern exponents of herbal medicine utilise all parts of the plant. In modern times the elderflower is thought to have soothing properties and may be used in eye lotions, while the berries are high in vitamin C and can be helpfully prepared to combat (and perhaps prevent) colds, flu and sore throats, while it is merely noted that the flowers, berries, leaves, stem and roots may all have laxative and diuretic qualities.

Culpeper however is far more thorough, colourful and varied in the ways in which he utilised all parts of the plant – though he ascribed much greater medicinal qualities to the dwarf elder (Sambucus ebulus- also called danewort or daneblood , rather than the common elder (Sambucus nigra)

Culpeper ascribes the Elder to the guardianship of Venus and as might therefore be anticipated there are some gentle remedies available, derived from the blossom.  The distilled water of the flowers is said to be useful in clearing the skin of sunburn, freckles and other potentially unwanted marks, but had that water been distilled in May its benefits would have been even greater as it was said to be able to remove soreness from the eyes, ulcers from the legs and palsy and shakes from the hands.

However, other preparations described by Culpeper make unapologetic use of the plant’s purgative qualities.  Beginning with the first shoots, boiled in fat which “mightily carry forth phlegm and choler”, there follows a graded scheme of treatments, so that the “middle or inward bark boiled in water and drunk” and then the “bark of the root boiled in wine” offered the same purgative effect but with increasing violence.

The juice of the root could also be taken to produce considerable vomiting, whilst the decoction of the root was claimed to cure the bites of both mad dogs and adders!

There are other, more unexpected uses as well – the root decoction, if sat on, could apparently provide a useful relief from “women’s problems”, though a particularly thrifty female might have wanted to gain the best use from boiling the berries in wine by both sitting on it and using it to dye her hair black.

If one was feeling particularly adventurous, the juice of the leaves “stuffed up the nostrils” might purge the “tunnicals of the brain”.

 

 

In terms of folklore, Elder is a plant that has been ascribed both protective and slightly sinister qualities, though this is not unusual for anything that was believed to be endowed with a particular spiritual strength. The medieval mind was well attuned to the dangers posed by the forces of the supernatural world.

It seems that both Scandinavian and Druidic lore associated the Elder with mother figures – the Elder Mother in Scandinavian myth and the Earth Mother for the druids. It was therefore important in both traditions to treat the tree with respect, and to ask permission before using any part of it. It said that Elder wine could be used to achieve hallucinations and clairvoyant abilities, and in the Celtic tree calendar the Elder occupied the important 13th month, from (now) November 25th to December 21st, therefore covering the shortest day and signifying both an end and a beginning.

The protective qualities of the Elder were sought by man and beast through the wearing of its dried leaves as a garland.  The boughs may also have been placed inside a country dairy as a guard against unwanted manifestations- the fact that it has fly-repellent abilities was a happy part of this.

It was also thought to be fortunate to have an Elder at the back door of a dwelling as a protection against evil- especially if it had been self-seeded.

On the other hand, there were associations with death and grief, especially in literary tradition. Dried Elder leaves were thrown into graves, and in, the “tree Vision of Piers Plowman” there is reference to a belief that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an Elder, and Shakespeare has Christ’s cross also made from the wood.

Rather more recently, JK Rowling raised the image of the Elder wood wand as very powerful yet dangerous and requiring the mastery of a very remarkable wizard by endowing one to none other than Dumbledore.

 

 

 

Aside from being used to make a rather dangerous wand, the wood of the Elder has been popular with wood turners, and could also be used to make tool handles, cogs – apparently for both mills and by watchmakers – and for butcher’s skewers, as well as flutes and other instruments.  Many of these make use of the fact that Elder wood is essentially hollow with an easily removed pithy centre. The Latin name for the plant – Sambucus – is said to have been derived from a Greco-Roman instrument the sambuca (or, less attractively the sack-but) which seems to have been not unlike the bagpipe in arrangement, and which used the Elder as a mouthpiece.

Our common name for the plant however, comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “aeld” meaning fire, which seems a little misleading given the burning qualities of the wood. The South Yorkshire Firewood Company says that the Elder burns quickly and with little heat, but producing lots of smoke. Chimney Works online further clarifies that the smoke thus plentifully provided contains a natural form of cyanide and so could be poisonous if inhaled. This perhaps the old rhyme:

“Elder is the Lady’s tree, burn it not or cursed ye be”. In fact, the association with fire is also due to the wood being hollow and so could be usefully employed as bellows.

The Elder, it seems, is a plant of contrasts. Delicious (according to some), but poisonous, medicinal yet associated with death and grief, hollow but dangerously strong, endowed with great spirituality yet also demanding great care and respect.  In this way it embodies the medieval attitude to the spiritual world itself, which was ever-present, always close, potentially dangerous and to be treated with considerable caution.