As a garden plant the common Elder is not admissible, though it forms a striking ornament in the wild hedgerows and copses, while its flowers yield the highly perfumed Elder-flower water, and its fruits give the Elder wine; but the tree runs into many varieties, several of which are very ornamental, the leaves being often very finely divided and jagged, and variegated both with golden and silver blotches. There is a handsome species from Canada (Sambucus Canadensis), which is worth growing in shrubberies, as it produces its pure white flowers in autumn.
FOOTNOTES:
[85:1] Called also Eldern in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and still earlier, Eller or Ellyr ("Catholicon Anglicum"). "The Ellern is a tree with long bowes, ful sounde and sad wythout, and ful holowe within, and ful of certayne nesshe pyth."—Clanvil de prop.
[85:2] From the facility with which the hard wood can be hollowed out, the tree was from very ancient times called the Bore-tree. See "Catholicon Anglicum," s.v. Bur-tre.
ELM.
| (1) | Adriana. | Thou art an Elm, my husband, I a Vine, Whose weakness married to thy stronger state Makes me with thy strength to communicate. |
| Comedy of Errors, act ii, sc. 2 (176). | ||
| (2) | Titania. | The female Ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the Elm. |
| Midsummer Night's Dream, act iv, sc. 1 (48). | ||
| (3) | Poins. | Answer, thou dead Elm, answer![87:1] |
| 2nd Henry IV, act ii, sc, 4 (358). | ||
Though Vineyards were more common in England in the sixteenth century than now, yet I can nowhere find that the Vines were ever trained, in the Italian fashion, to Elms or Poplars. Yet Shakespeare does not stand alone in thus speaking of the Elm in its connection with the Vine. Spenser speaks of "the Vine-prop Elme," and Milton—