HISTORICAL
Flat topped blue elderberry flowers
Conical red elderberry flowers
twig. Leaves are pinnately compound with 5–7 lanceolate leaflets that have acuminate tips and serrated
margins. In April and early May, small white flowers are
born in upright to drooping cone shaped clusters (panicles). The fruit changes from green to orange, ripening
to a bright red by the end of June. Berries (drupes)
are about 5 millimetres wide, spherical to egg-shaped,
with 2–5 seed (nutlets) that are up to 3 millimetres long
and 1.5 millimetres wide. Red elderberries thrive in our
moist mild climates throughout nearly all of the forested Pacific Northwest. Look for them in forests and
forest margins from sea level to subalpine.
Red elderberry can readily be distinguished from
blue elderberry (Sambucus cerulea) by its flowers
and fruit. The flowers and fruit of red elderberry are
in cone-shaped clusters whereas those of blue elderberry are flat-topped. Red elderberry also flowers
in the spring and fruits in the summer whereas blue
elderberry flowers in the summer and fruits in the fall.
For those who like to test their wintertime elderberry
identification skills, notice that the young stems of
red elderberry are purplish grey whereas those of
blue elderberry are orangish grey.
were bent to the ground using hooked sticks and
entire berry clusters were broken off and placed in
baskets. When several baskets were full, the berries
were stripped off of their stems and steamed or boiled
in bentwood boxes, small canoes, or skunk cabbage
lined pit ovens for several hours.
The cooked berries were then spread out onto
skunk cabbage leaves to dry above a hot fire or in
the sun to make berry cakes (fruit leather), which was
often stored until the winter before being consumed.
Though abundant, elderberry fruit was considered
second rate and was often mixed as a bulking agent
with better tasting berries.
During the historic period many First Nations
steamed red elderberries in steel pots, sweetened
the fruit with sugar, and canned them in glass jars.
Red elderberries are very seedy and the Kwakwaka’wakw, who generally believed it was rude to drink
water during or directly after a feast, made an exception for red elderberries so that people could rinse
the seeds out of their mouths. Today few people eat
red elderberries, perhaps on account of their slightly
bitter-pungent flavour.
Traditional Uses
Elderberry Fruit Leather
Red elderberries were traditionally harvested and processed for food by virtually all the First Nations groups
throughout the plant’s range in the Pacific Northwest
for several thousands of years. Berry-laden branches
Last summer, the first red elderberries began to fully
ripen in the middle of July. My wife Katrina, and I
plucked off entire berry clusters and quickly filled two
grocery bags. We put our berries in the freezer for a
SPRING/SUMMER 2016
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