Whether you call them elderberry flowers, elder flowers, or elder blow, they all are great to eat! In this video, I go into some details about how to identify this great plant. I also give tips on how to pick the best flowers, and I'll show how to get the flowers ready to use -- both fresh and dried.
This video applies to the Common Elderberry of the eastern United States, the blue elder of the western US, and the black elderberry of Europe because that are so closely related that they were recently combined into the same species.
The elderberry grows as a bush, usually wth multiple stems. It can be a big bush. Look at Klutzy Gardener over on the right, and he's 6 foot, 3 inches tall! Here's the flowerhead attached to the end of a branch. And look how these leaves come out opposite each other on the branch. Each leaf has 5-11 leaflets with jagged edges. As they get older, the elderberry branches get woody and their bark has distinctive bumps. Elderberry branches are not solid wood. They have a spongy pith in the center.
The elderberry flowerhead is gorgeous. It's very flat. It does not have a conical shape - it's flat! Here's how the flowerhead grows: the flowerstems branch out in a whorl, with each stem branching out again into another whorl, and so on. A close look at the flowerhead shows it is made of lots and lots of individual flowers. The flavor of the elderberry flowers does not come from the petals or nectar - it comes from the flowers' pollen! So it's important to harvest the flowerheads at the stage when the pollen is fresh, not before the flowerbuds open up and not after the pollen is gone.
Both in the wild and in a cultivated landscape, an elderberry bush is dramatic! Every year, people stop and ask me what this bush is!
I do want to emphasize that even though the biggest flowerheads may have multiple levels to them, each level is flat and it's not arranged in a cone shape -- that's a different plant! Here's a flowerhead that's too immature to bother with - the buds haven't opened up yet. Here's a flowerhead with some flowers already getting old. The best thing to do in this case is just harvest the part of the flowerhead that's at the right stage.
Even though elderberry flowers are little, it really doesn't take long to collect enough flowerheads to use for a bunch of different things. I like to use a lot of flowers fresh. But the green parts of elderberry plants are not good for anybody to eat, so I rub the flowers off the flowerhead. I do get a little bit of the green stems in there, but not enough to worry about. I also try to make sure the bugs and spiders escape.
I also set some flowerheads aside to dry in a dark place like a paper sack. But I just left these in a bowl. When the flowerheads are dry, it's easier to rub off the flowers. Then I put the dried flowers in a jar so I can use them later in the year for elder flower tea, which is really good!
I'll post a video soon about making tea with from dried and fresh elderberry flowers. And I'll be posting a video on how to make some great elder flower pancakes, too.
Elderberry: Sambucus nigra, Family Adoxaceae
Common Elderberry: Sambucus nigra subspp. candadensis
Blue Elder: Sambucus nigra subspp. cerulea
Black Elderberry: Sambucus nigra
My video on picking and using elderberry flowers: • Elderberry Flowers: Ho...
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/ @haphazardhomestead
5 авг 2015
