White and Greenish 



3-parted. Stem: A shrub 4 to 10 ft. high, smooth, pithy, 

 with little wood. Leaves: Opposite, pinnately compounded 

 of 5 to 1 1 (usually 7) oval, pointed, and saw-edged leaflets, 

 heavy-scented when crushed. Fruit: Reddish-black, juicy 

 " berries " (drupes). 



Preferred Habitat — Rich, moist soil ; open situation. 



Flowering Season — ^June — ^July. 



Distribution — Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward 

 2,000 miles. 



Flowers far less beautiful than these flat-spread, misty clus- 

 ters, that are borne in such profusion along the country lane and 

 meadow hedgerows in June, are brought from the ends of the 

 earth to adorn our over-conventional gardens. Certain European 

 relatives, with golden or otherwise variegated foliage that looks 

 sickly after the first resplendent outburst in spring, receive places 

 of honor with monotonous frequency in American shrubbery 

 borders. 



Like the wild carrot among all the umbel-bearers, and the 

 daisy among the horde of composites, the elder flower has massed 

 its minute florets together, knowing that there was no hope of 

 attracting insect friends, except in such union. Where clumps of 

 elder grow — and society it ever prefers to solitude — few shrubs, 

 looked at from above, which, of course, is the winged insect's point 

 of view, offer a better advertisement. TJiere are people who ob- 

 ject to the honey-like odor of the flowers. Doubtless this is what 

 most attracts the flies and beetles, while the lesser bees, that fre- 

 quent them also, are more strongly appealed to through the eye. 

 No nectar rewards visitors, consequently butterflies rarely stop on 

 the flat clusters; but there is an abundant lunch of pollen for such 

 as like it. Each minute floret has its five anthers so widely spread 

 away from the stigmas that self-pollination is impossible ; but with 

 the help of small, winged pollen carriers plenty of cross-fertilized 

 fruit forms. With the help of migrating birds, the minute nutlets 

 within the "berries " are distributed far and wide. 



When clusters of dark, juicy fruit make the bush top-heavy, 

 it is, of course, no part of their plan to be gathered into pails, 

 crushed and boiled and fermented into the spicy elderberry wine 

 that is still as regularly made in some old-fashioned kitchens as 

 currant jelly and pickled peaches. Both flowers and fruit have 

 strong medicinal properties. Snuffling children are not loath to 

 swallow sugar pills moistened with the homoeopathic tincture of 

 Sambucus. The common European species (S. nigra), a mystic 

 plant, was once employed to cure every ill that flesh is heir to ; 

 not only that, but, when used as a switch, it was believed to 

 check a lad's growth. Very likely ! Every whittling schoolboy 

 knows how easv it is to remove the white pith from an elder 

 stem. An ancient musical instrument, the sambuca, was doubt- 



255 



