In late spring or early summer, the elder bears tiny, branched, white, lacy flowers in flat-topped to slightly rounded clusters (panicles) that spread over 6" across.
The tiny, spherical, juicy, purple-black to black, seedy berries are hardly more than 1/8" across. They grow in branched clusters, like the flowers, ripening from mid-summer to early fall, in quantities that weigh down the branches.
The blue elder (Sambucus cerulea) has dark blue to blackish berries, and grows in the western 1/3 of the United States It's very similar to the common elderberry, and you can use it the same way.
Avoid elderberries species with red fruit growing in rounded, instead of flat clusters. They may make you sick. Hercules' club is a shrub or small tree with feather-compound leaves that looks a little like the common elderberry. It has flat clusters of poisonous, black berries, often arranged in a ring, and a short, unbranched, thorny trunk. Elderberries are thornless.
The common elderberry often grows in large, dense stands in moist places. Look for it in marshes, along riverbanks, along roadsides, and in moist woods and thickets in eastern North America and the West Indies.
Collect the flowers by plucking off the stalk at the cluster's base. It's impossible to remove each tiny flower individually. Take a small proportion of the flowers from each bush, and collect only where they are abundant or the plant won't produce any berries. Where you find one elder bush, you usually find many more.
The best time to harvest the flowers is when all the flowers are open and none has yellowed yet. This is when they're the most fragrant.
The flowers make wonderful food. Try elder flower (sometimes called elderblow) fritters using your favorite tempura or pancake batter. Make a light, mild batter, so you don't overpower the delicate flowers. Try saut'eing them.
Elder flowers make a pleasant tasting tea, especially with mint. They also make a potent, fragrant wine. Steeped in vinegar-they add flavor and strengthen the stomach.
Gather the berries like the flowers. This is quick. The real work occurs at home: Pulling small bunches of berries from their stems, and sorting the fruit from the debris on a tray, takes time
Taste some berries from a few bushes before you collect, so you can choose the bushes with the tastiest fruit.
Avoid unripe, green berries-they'll get you sick. Even raw ripe elderberries make some people nauseous Cooking or drying dispels the offending substance, and greatly improves the flavor. Baking this fruit in muffins, cakes and breads imbues them with a piquant crunchiness. They become the central ingredient whenever you use them in baked goods. Elderberries aren't sweet and contain no thickeners. Rely on other ingredients for these elements, especially if you're making the European favorite, elderberry jam.
The berries have few calories and lots of nutrition. They provide very large amounts of potassium and beta-carotene, as well as sugar and fruit acids, calcium, phosphorous and vitamin C.
Many older herb books recommend using elderberry leaves, roots, or bark medicinally, probably because Indian herbal experts used them. This doesn't guarantee safety: NEVER USE THESE PARTS OF THE ELDERBERRY. They're poisonous. They contain a bitter alkaloid and glycoside that may change into cyanide. Children have been poisoned using elderberry twig peashooters, and adults have been poisoned using hollowed twigs to tap maple trees. However, there is a benefit to the toxicity: People use dried, crumbled elderberry leaves in their gardens as a natural insecticide.
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