52 LONDON TREES 



responsible for its extermination from many of our 

 hedges and woodlands ; for should a seedling of the 

 Elder get into a thorn hedge, it will quickly kill out 

 the adjoining plants. For all that, when laden with 

 its big panicles of cream-coloured flowers at mid- 

 summer, or its abundantly produced purplish-black 

 berries in autumn, the Elder must ever rank as a 

 distinctly ornamental tree. The Golden and Cut- 

 leaved Elders are particularly worthy of notice, and 

 the Scarlet-fruited (S. racemosa) when laden with its 

 brilliant scarlet fruit presents a splendid appearance. 



As a nurse tree the Elder has few equals, and in 

 places where the strong west wind blows for several 

 months, and where the gorse and juniper look flattened 

 by the long-continued blasts, the Elder will grow and 

 thrive. On the wind-swept islands along the nor- 

 thern Scottish coast the Elder is one of the most 

 valuable shrubs ; while on the dreary sandy wastes 

 of Lancashire, where the wind blows with hurricane 

 force and wrecks are by no means uncommon, the 

 Elder stands nobly out, and growing in pure sand 

 sends out its stoutest branches into the very teeth of 

 the gale. 



No shrub grows so quickly when it is young or 

 so slowly when it is old as the Elder. It makes a 

 good plant for filling up gaps in live fences that pass 

 under trees, and for boundary fences where little else 

 would grow, preserving as it does the continuity of 

 the hedge right up to the trunks of large trees. At 

 Newcastle-on-Tyne the Elder is largely grown on 

 account of its thriving in the neighbourhood of chemi- 

 cal works, the tree being almost impervious to the 

 action of fumes that are generally so injurious to 

 vegetation. 



