Someone told me they missed how elderberry flowers smell. I didn’t know they even had a fragrance, so I trekked out to give it a try.
And it does.
This is one of my favorite flowering and fruiting native plants, and I have a fond memory of a Monty Python skit in which the keeper of a French castle taunts English knights with “your father smelt of elderberry.”
While I realize that one person’s perfume is another’s stink, my opinion of elderberry flowers is they smell of two-day armpit with a trace of licorice.
Still, elderberry shrub is one of our most overlooked native plants for gardens, partly because they are so common along fence rows this time of year, partly because they aren’t generally available for sale. I mean, why plant an elderberry, when there are crape myrtles and Vitex?
Except you can eat elderberries. The large, flat flower clusters can be dipped in batter and frittered like tempura or pancakes; a light batter is best so you don’t overpower the delicate flowers. The flowers also make a nice tea, especially if you add a little lemon or mint to it for added flavor.
Though unripe elderberry fruit can make you sick, cooking the ripe, juicy black berries renders them perfectly safe and actually brings out their flavor a bit more. They can be made into pies, muffins, cakes and breads. They aren’t very sweet, so most folks add sugar or other fruits. The berries can also be made into jams, jellies, or delicate wine or cordials.
The North American elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) is a large shrub, rarely a small tree, that often dies down to the ground in the winter because its stems are brittle and pithy. The European elderberry (S. nigra) makes a gnarly old woody tree. Both have long compound leaves with up to nine leaflets, sort of like a pecan tree, and they come in pairs, each leaf opposite the other on the stem.
While there are several cultivars grown for their heavier fruit production, the regular native elderberry is fine in landscapes; However, my all-time favorite is Black Lace, an award-winning selection with finely divided fern- or Japanese maple-like purple-black foliage. Its pale pink flower clusters and almost-black berries are magic against the deep dark foliage.
Elderberry is way better than a mere roadside ditch and fence-row beauty. And you can eat it.
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