WHITE OR WHITISH FLOWERS 
Elder (Sambucus canadensis) . Honeysuckle family. 
June, July. 
A branching shrub, a few feet to ten feet high. The little 
flowers are in flat clusters (cymes), the corolla is somewhat 
urn-shaped with five spreading lobes ; stamens five. The leaves 
are compound with five to eleven leaflets, toothed, oblong. 
Fruit, small purple or black berries (drupes). Rich soil. 
The history of Elder abounds in practical and mystic lore. 
Of the same plant which furnishes a page in the Dispensatory 
we learn from Skinner's " Myths and Legends " that " On the 
night of January 6 you may cut a branch frox.o. it, naving first 
asked permission, and spat thrice if no answer comes from the 
wood. With the branch you will mark a magic circle in a lonely 
field, stand at the centre, surrounded with such kinds of bloom 
and berry as you have saved from St. John's night, and, so 
prepared, you will demand of the devil, then abroad, some of 
his precious fern-seed that gives to you the strength of thirty 
men. Though the evil one is foot-free on that night, he is still 
under the spell of the good Hulda, and when a wand of her 
wood is directed against him he must obey, and the fern-seed 
will be brought by a shadowy somebody, folded in a chalice 
cloth." 
Incidentally Elder wood cures toothache, keeps the house" 
from attack, fends off snakes, mosquitoes, and warts, quiets 
nerves, interriipts fits, removes poison from metal vessels, keeps 
wonns out of furniture, and guarantees that he who cultivates 
it shall die in his own house. Skinner adds that " if this cross 
be planted on the grave — as in the Tyrol, where peasants lift 
their hats to the Elder — the beatitude of the buried is under- 
stood when it bursts into bloom and leaf; if it fails to flower, 
the relatives may draw their own conclusions." 
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