Plants - Pacific Northwest

Sambucus Racemosa - Red Elderberry

Plate 146

Plate 147 Plate 148

Sambucus Racemosa: Red Elderberry, Red Elder, Scarlet Elder, Mountain Elder, Stinking Elderberry, Stinking Elder, Red Berried Elder, Redberry Elder, sureau rouge, Bore Tree, Boutry, Bunchberry Elder.

Red Elder berry grows in the coastal, swampy thickets, moist clearings and open forests, low-elevations to mid-elevations. Shrub to small tree, deciduous, to 20 feet tall. Bark is warty. Leaves opposite divided into 5-7 leaflets. Leaflets lance-shaped, 2-6" long, pointed, sharply toothed, and often somewhat hairy beneath. Flowers are white to creamy in color, small, many, in a rounded or pyramid-shaped cluster. Fruits are bright-red drupes, each with 3-5 seeds, which are edible when raw (they are crunchy and sometimes bitter)

Red Elderberries were important as food plants to the West coast natives, (boiled for sauces, tangy jellies, or wine.) Keep in mind that these berries should always be cooked because the raw berries can cause nausea (the stems, bark, leaves, roots contain cyanide-producing glycosides,and is considered toxic). Caches of red elderberries have been found in archeological sites that date back hundreds of years.

Dyes can be made from the bark, fruit, and stems, and an insecticide from the dried leaves.

The name Sambucus is derived from the Greek sambuca which was a stringed instrument supposed to have been made from elder wood. The hollow stems have been fashioned into flutes and blowguns. The wood is hard and has been used for combs, spindles, and pegs.

Sambucus Racemosa is found growing across North America from Newfoundland to Alaska. Restricted to moist, cool sites in the south, extending into California in the coastal mountains, Arizona and New Mexico in the Rockies, and Georgia and Tennessee in the Appalachian highlands.
Northwoods variety leucocarpa extends from SE British Columbia, Montana, and South Dakota east through Canada to Newfoundland and the NE United States; also south into the Great Lakes states and through the Appalachian Mountains into Georgia and Tennessee.