392 THE ELDER TREE. 
S. racemosa (L.)\—The racemose-flowered Elder is pretty 
generally known as the scarlet-berried elder, and is by far the 
most ornamental plant of the genus. It is a native of the 
south and middle of Europe, and of the mountains of Siberia, 
where it forms a low tree from twelve to fifteen feet high. In 
Britain it attains a greater height, and it possesses all the 
vigour in growth of the common species, and is equally hardy. 
In its deciduous state, the chestnut-coloured bark and the 
prominent buds of its young shoots are very ornamental. The 
young wood yields racemes of flowers, which open with the 
expanding leaf in spring. Its foliage is of a bright green, 
pinnate, deeply serrated, and extremely handsome. Its panicles 
of fruit resemble miniature clusters of grapes of a bright scarlet, 
which attain their brilliancy early in autumn, and long before 
the leaves are shed. When in full fruit, in point of beauty 
it has no rival among deciduous plants. But it is shy in 
yielding fruit ; even in situations possessed of a good climate, 
the plant, though constant in blossom, unlike the common 
elder, often fails to produce fruit. I have seldom seen this 
species yield fruit abundantly in any part of Scotland, except 
in late districts, in the Highlands of Moray, Inverness, and Ross. 
In earlier situations the plant generally blossoms about the 
first of April, while frosts prevail; and its success in the 
Highlands is attributed to the influence of a late climate, which 
retards the expansion of the blossoms until a period when they 
are exempt from injury. 
