Just over a year ago, on one of our winter grounds days, we planted some more native trees and over 100 whips and saplings went into the ground. These ranged from blackthorns to apple ‘step-overs’ and hazelnuts to gingko. Within our pond area stands a magnificent elder tree (Sambucus nigra) from which we make our own elderflower cordial in the spring (it is heavy with flower at the moment) and then pop the elderberries into jams with our blackberries or raspberries later in the year. Our children love foraging in this way and so we decided to plant an elder grove at the bottom of the sports field. Twelve elders were duly planted and are now really looking quite resplendent with their fresh leaves and gradually thickening stems. At break time children love to run in and out of them still respecting their relative fragility, but at other times they sketch or measure them.
We started to look more into this graceful and generous deciduous native tree. We found out that its name comes from the Anglo-saxon ‘aeld’ which means ‘fire’ and the hollow stems were used as bellows to blow air into a fire. Its folklore is a little mixed as it was thought that if you burnt elder wood you would see the devil (don’t drop those bellows!) but if you planted elder by your house it would keep the devil away.
It is a beautiful tree to look at although it doesn’t dominate the landscape as an oak or horse chestnut would and it tends to grow in scrub, hedgerows, wastelands and in woodlands. Sometimes they are found near rabbit warrens or badger setts, as animals distribute the seed via their droppings. Because it is a native tree, it supports a wide variety of wildlife: the flowers provide nectar for insects and the berries are eaten by birds and mammals. Dormice and bank voles like to eat both the berries and the flowers. Moth caterpillars feed on the elder leaves including the white spotted pug, swallowtail, dot moth and buff ermine.
The elder tree grows only to a height of around 15m and lives up to about 60 years. It has quite a short trunk (bole) with grey-brown furrowed bark. The leaves are pinnate with 5-7 oval and toothed leaflets – they really don’t smell very nice if you touch them either which is strange when the cordial from the flowers is so lovely and sweet. The flowers look almost flat and can be really large – up to 30cm across, are creamy in colour and smell absolutely beautiful. The elder tree which is in our pond is also right outside the Year 4 classrooms so the fragrance from these trees floats through their windows on spring breezes. In late summer and early autumn each flower develops into tiny, purple-black berries (pollination by insects). These sour berries are beautiful in jams and sauces, which we make with other fruit from our edible hedging and allotments. In the winter the elder tree can be identified because the twigs smell unpleasant, are hollow or have spongy white pith inside. However, the flowers, berries and leaves are all poisonous with the flowers and berries needing to be cooked before being eaten. Isn’t it strange that a tree can have two extremes of fragrance – sweet blooms and unpleasant twigs and leaves. It made us wonder. We found out that the leaves have a distinctively unpleasant odour that repels insects efficiently that they used to be hung above horses in stables to repel them. Shakespeare was referring to this when he coined the phrase, “the Stinking Elder.”
Did you know that flies
pollinate elder trees more than bees?
