154 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



the elder has certainly been introduced.. Geographically, 

 it extends over all parts of continental Europe, excepting 

 the north-eastern. It reaches also into southern Siberia, 

 the region of the Caucasus, and northern Africa. No 

 tree is more remarkable for rapidity of growth while 

 young, or for preserving a more stationary character after 

 attaining full development. No tree, when green, is more 

 easily identified, the odour of the bruised leaves (usually 

 considered nauseous) being peculiar to it. When in 

 flower it can be told from all others having similar 

 bloom, by the leaves being pinnate and opposite. In 

 autumn all is confirmed by the massive, almost sump- 

 tuous bunches of deep-hued fruit, the only ones of their 

 kind. In winter, in case of need, we may discover it by 

 the abundance of light and spongy pith in every shoot 

 more than a year old, and which is exceeded only in 

 the sunflower. Several varieties, as to foliage, occur in 

 gardens, as the variegated, the golden, the ternate-leaved, 

 and the parsley-leaved. Besides these, there are the 

 white-berried and the green-berried, the flavour of which 

 is much milder than that of the purple. The colour, 

 in this last, resides purely in the skin, the pulp being 

 translucent. 



The elder is embedded in folk-lore and superstitions, 

 some of them very ancient. The vernacular name is the 

 Anglo-Saxon ellen or ellern, a word of indeterminable 

 signification, with the same kind of accidental or careless 

 insertion of a d that we have in " tender," Latin tener. 

 " Sambucus " is the name of the tree in Pliny ; yet, in 



