Sambucus nigra
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Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
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'Sambucus nigra' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Common Names
- Common Elder
A deciduous shrub, 15 to 20 ft high, or a small tree 30 ft or more high; young branches glabrous. Leaves pinnate, 4 to 12 in. long, composed of three, five, or seven (usually five) leaflets, which are ovate, 11⁄2 to 5 in. long, 3⁄4 to 2 in. wide, sharply toothed, glabrous except for a few hairs beneath. Flowers yellowish or dull white, with a heavy odour, produced during June in flat umbels 5 to 8 in. across, each umbel composed of four or five main divisions which are again several times divided. Berries globose, shining black, 1⁄4 in. wide, ripe in September.
Native of Europe, N. Africa and S.W. Asia. One of the best known of native shrubs, and to be regarded more often as a weed in gardens than anything else. Still, the elder, when made to assume the tree form by restricting it to one stem for 6 or 8 ft up, is not without a certain quaintness and charm. Its trunk is rough and crooked, and carries a large rounded head of richly leafy branches, laden with flower in June and with fruit in September. The seeds are spread by birds, and young elder plants spring up everywhere in woods, tall shrubberies, etc. In the neighbourhood of more important plants they must be rigorously pulled up. The species is chiefly represented in gardens by the numerous varieties that have sprung from it, some of which are mentioned below as worth cultivating. The type itself may be left to furnish out-of-the-way damp, dark corners, where little else will live.
No plant holds (or perhaps it is safer to say, used to hold) a more honoured place in domestic pharmacy than the elder. From its berries is prepared, by boiling with sugar, a wine or syrup which, diluted with hot water, is a favourite beverage in rural districts. It is usually taken just before bedtime and is considered a useful remedy for colds, chills, etc.
A large number of varieties have been obtained under cultivation, of which the following only need be mentioned as the most distinct:
'Aurea'
Common Names
Golden Elder
A good yellow-leaved shrub, useful for producing a broad patch of colour. It may be pruned back each spring. In cultivation 1883 and possibly the same as the elder once known as S. n. aurea Dixonii.
'Laciniata'
Common Names
One-leaved Ash
Parsley-leaved Elder
Synonyms / alternative names
Sambucus nigra var. laciniata L.
Sambucus nigra f. laciniata (L.) Zabel
Editorial Note
Treated by Bean as a botanical form.
The handsomest cut-leaved variety of common elder, the leaflets being pinnately divided into linear pointed lobes. Known since the 16th century and occurring occasionally in the wild.
'Linearis'
Synonyms / alternative names
Sambucus nigra f. heterophylla (Pépin) Schwer.
Sambucus nigra var. linearis G.Kirchn.
In this form the blade of many leaflets is reduced to threadlike proportions, consisting of little more than the stalk and midrib. Others are 1⁄8 to 3⁄4 in. wide, but distorted and shapeless. A curiosity only.
'Madonna'
A boldly variegated cultivar with broad yellow margins, flushing almost apricot in colour in spring.
'Marginata'
A handsomely variegated shrub whose leaves are bordered with creamy white. The name Sambucus nigra var. albo-variegata was used for this in previous editions of Bean’s Trees and Shrubs, but it belongs properly to an old white-splashed form. There is also a gold-margined variety, ‘Aureo-Marginata’.
'Pendula'
A weeping form with stiff, pendulous branches.'Pyramidalis'
A stiffly erect, inelegant form.'Roseo-plena'
Flowers rosy coloured, with a double row of petals.'Rotundifolia'
Leaves often with only three leaflets, proportionately broader, smaller and more rounded than in the type.'Viridis'
Synonyms / alternative names
Sambucus nigra var. viridis Weston
Sambucus virescens Desf.
Sambucus nigra var. virescens (Desf.) Sweet
Sambucus nigra var. alba Weston
Sambucus nigra var. leucocarpa Hayne
Sambucus nigra f. alba (Weston) Rehder
Sambucus nigra var. chlorocarpa Hayne
Sambucus nigra f. viridis (Weston) Schwer.
Editorial Note
Treated by Bean as a botanical form.
A mutation, occurring occasionally in the wild, including Britain, in which the fruits lose their purple dye and become greenish or whitish and more or less translucent; known since the 16th century. The wine made from the berries is clear. The green-fruited and so-called white-fruited forms were united in previous editions of this work, as they were by Graf von Schwerin in his monograph on the genus. De Candolle, too, in the Prodromus, doubted if they merited separate naming.There are two or three clones in cultivation in which the leaves are more or less flushed with purple. One of these, grown at Kew since 1957, derives from a plant found by Mr Robert Howat by a roadside in Yorkshire in 1954, and propagated by him. In this the flowers are pink-tinged, and the leaves bronze-purple, with or without streaks of bright green (Gard. Chron., Vol. 156 (1964), p. 567). A clone cultivated by Messrs Hillier as ‘Foliis Purpureis’, and received from a garden in N. Ireland, received an Award of Merit in 1979.