Elder, the anti-viral herb.
This sacred tree provides medicine, food, dye and witches' wands.
Jun 12, 2007
Elder, the anti-viral herb.
Elder, Sambucus niger, is a small native British tree, beloved of Druids and hedgewitches with good reason. It grows easily in dry, waste land and is immune to the attentions of rabbits. It is easily broken but regrows with vigour. Its many uses include boiling the leaves with alum for green-gold dyes and using the edible berries for hedgerow jam or for an superb gentleman’s relish. The dead wood makes excellent kindling, living bushes reinforce hedges and the flowers make tea, vanilla flavouring, and a sure cure for influenza and other viral infections.
As an antivirus, it has recently been supported by research to demonstrate that it works by blunting the sharp protrusions on the crystalline coat of a virus, so that it cannot puncture cell walls, the first step to hijacking the DNA of living cells and reprogramming them to replicate the invader.
The vanilla-scented panicles of creamy blossom are picked when fully open on a fine, dry, sunny day and left for a month, spread thinly in an airy room to become dry and crumbly. They are then rubbed and shaken to separate the flowers from the stalks which are discarded. The flowers are then used like tea leaves to make a delicate tisane which can be flavoured with lemon and honey, or added to lemon marmalade for extra piquancy.
Elizabethans made delicious pancakes from fresh-picked plate-like heads of blossom, dipped in batter, fried and sprinkled with Sweet Cicily (Myrrhis odorata) or even the rare treat of sugar.
The blue-black berries can be boiled with equal amounts of vinegar and sugar, strained, bottled and left to mature for several years into a rich relish which goes well with beef, pork or poultry.
Hedgerow jam is made by boiling elder berries with hips and haws, crab-apples, wild plums, barberries or any other edible early autumn berries, including blackberries, to make a thick syrup, strained and reboiled with equal quantities of sugar, poured into jars, covered and left to set. It will keep for years, but is so exquisite that it rarely gets the chance.
The Elder tree is short-lived and fragile, but sacred to Druids who would never damage it, nor take so much as a single berry without first asking permission, expressing gratitude and leaving something in return.
Hedge-witches, the respected wise-women of the middle ages, made wands from the brittle branches, especially prized if they were twisted around each other or entwined in honeysuckle or even old-man’s-beard, the wild clematis, to form a triple spiral or triskele. Even then, they would not cut the tree, but would only accept the gift if it had already fallen or been broken. If it had grown within the precincts of a forest, they would look for a keyhole oak, a tree where two trunks had grown apart and then rejoined, crossed or grafted themselves to form a living arch through which articles could be passed to purify them and imbue them with the energising power of the great trees.
Few insects attack the elder and rabbits avoid it. The leaves are unappetising to livestock. The Elder therefore makes a trouble-free background to a garden border, especially in its developed forms with gold, purple and even lace-like leaves.
Like many common, taken for granted plants we regard as weeds, there is a reason why it grows near the habitations of man, who once prized it for its many virtues and are slowly learning to do so once again.
