THE ELDER.
Everybody is familiar with the Elder, with its large corymbs of white flowers, hanging over ditches and watercourses, rivalling the linden in sweetness and equalling the balm in its healing virtues. It is common in all wet fallows, flowering in the latter part of June. No shrub is so generally known, both as a tenant of the fields and as an ingredient in the packages of the simpler. We have seen its dried flowers in nice paper bags, neatly done up by some benevolent hands for the benefit of the sick, and we breathed their odors as they were wafted from the vessel in which they were steeped, before we ever saw them in the fields. The Elder is one of the flowering shrubs that first attracts our attention after the blossoms of the orchard have faded. The bee is seen to hunt for it before the vine is in blossom, leaving the flowers of the garden for these abundant stores of native sweets. In autumn we have seen the fences and brooksides laden with its fruit, while the purple clusters were stripped day after day by the robin and catbird, until not one was left to fall to the ground. When the leaves are gone, the branches are sought by children, who use its hollow wood for making various juvenile implements.
“The Elder,” says Barnard, speaking of the English plant, “is common, almost universal, in cottage gardens, hedge-rows, and ruins. It is in fact a thoroughly domesticated tree, and seldom is it found in England far from human habitation, although I have seen it in the wildest valleys of the Pyrenees, when it appeared to have the richest scarlet berries, instead of black.” The species seen in the Pyrenees is probably identical with the American panicled Elder, a rare species in New England, bearing its flowers in spikes, and producing scarlet berries.
The Elder has not much beauty when unadorned either with flowers or fruit. Its pinnate leaves are of a dull green, and seldom add any tints to the glory of autumn. Its flowers, borne in large flat cymes, are very showy, and emit a peculiar though agreeable odor, and are used in Europe to give to wine the flavor of Frontignac. The berries of the European Elder, which is believed by Michaux to be the same as the American common Elder, differing only in its superior size, are said to be poisonous to poultry. But the fruit of the American shrub possesses no such properties. It is eagerly devoured by the insectivorous birds, and is used in the manufacture of a harmless dietetic wine, whose benefits have been very generally appreciated by nostrum venders.