Respect your Elder-berries

Sarah Nelson - Slow Food Correspondent

Especially when they turn out not to be elderberries….

My husband has this saying that he uses from time to time: “Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success.” This may be one of those times. If it isn’t one of those times, it is at least a time when I’m choosing to let you know fairly definitively that even I, intrepid slow food blogger, do not always get it right!

As a matter of fact, sometimes I get it wrong. Really wrong. Toxically wrong. So wrong that I almost poison all of my family and friends, and then who would read my blog?

Here’s what happened:

One of the most magical things about summer is berry season, but by late August, the strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries are all played out. It seems the berry is gone for another year. That is, unless you know where to look! As a converted slow foodie, you know that I’m not suggesting you go to the grocery store. Oh no, I say pack up the kids (or in my case, dogs) and hit the country roads and vacant wooded lots for an adventure.

I’m lucky enough to live on the backside of nowhere where uninhabited woods abound, but I’m even luckier to have spotted exactly what I was looking for in a neighbor’s yard. What was I looking for?  I was looking for an elder tree. That sounds vaguely Tolkien-esque, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a reason why.

The Europeans and Native Americans held a certain reverence for the elder tree and its magical properties. Many believed that the tree had the ability to drive away witches and kill snakes. (I can guarantee the last one probably isn’t true.) Some people believed that sleeping under the elder tree on a midsummer night would bring about the appearance of fairies. I can’t vouch for that one, but I do know that sleeping outdoors underneath an elder tree in midsummer is guaranteed to bring about the appearance of mosquitoes.



Historically, elder berries have been used both as a weight loss supplement as it is a natural diuretic and as a cosmetic known to tone and cleanse skin, lighten freckles and soothe sunburn.

Elderberries are rich in potassium, beta-carotene and Vitamin C.  The site www.herbwisdom.com reports some astonishing news about elderberries, such as:
1)      They are known to “lower cholesterol, improve vision, boost the immune system, improve heart health” and have been used in the treatment of coughs, colds, flu as well as bacterial and viral infections.
2)      Elderberry juice was used to treat the flu epidemic in Panama in 1995. “People with the flu who took elderberry juice reported less severe symptoms and felt better much faster….”
3)      In Israel, they have “determined that elderberry stimulates the body’s immune system, and they are treating cancer and AIDS patients with it.”

Elderberries are also known to be effective in treating colds, yeast infections, asthma, nasal/chest congestion and diabetes.

That seems worthy of a little hike through the woods, doesn’t it?

I had enlisted the help of my neighbor on this project since some of the trees were on her property, and after a short walk, we had a huge basket full of elderberries. It was late when we finished harvesting, and so, I opted to take the berries home to remove from the stems the next day.

Well, you know how sometimes a passing comment in the moment means nothing to you, but it sort of reverberates around in your brain hours later? I kept recalling my neighbor commenting on the thorns on the elder tree. In the moment, I was so locked into my opinion that I was picking elderberries that I didn’t right away process the importance of what she said. Thank goodness, I didn’t have time to do anything with those berries until the next day.



The following day, the thorn comment still niggled in my brain. I began to do a little online research, but I couldn’t really discern to my own comfort level if what I picked were in fact elderberries. Elderberries grow in wide clumps at the end of the stem, but my berries (as you can see in the picture) had berries going down the stem quite a ways.

I finally contacted Steve Brill at www.wildmanstevebrill.com with my photos, and he very helpfully pointed me in the right direction.

What I thought were elderberries were, in fact, berries from a tree familiarly known as the Devil’s Walking Stick. Besides the berries being in the wrong formation, the thorns were quite a good indicator. As you can imagine, any tree named after the Prince of Darkness’ walking aid has berries that are pretty toxic. In other words, I had a near miss. If it hadn’t been for my neighbor’s observation, things in my world would have turned pretty dire.

All those berries are in the compost pile now, but the moral of the story is that when foraging for food be absolutely, positively sure you know what you are picking. Otherwise, the results could be terrible. If you don’t believe me, watch “Into the Wild”.

If you are ever in doubt about an edible tree or berry, I highly recommend contacting Steve Brill. His website is extremely helpful and detailed with many pictures.

Happy eating! And careful foraging!
Sarah