We don’t have a California state shrub yet, but the blue elderberry (Sambucus mexicana … usually) ought to be a top contender for the honor—for its beauty, versatility, and importance to California’s natural and cultural history. It’s an overachiever.
Of the three species of elderberries (sometimes called elders) that grow in California, the blue elderberry is the most widespread and prevalent, gracing hillsides and stream banks all over the state. Anywhere water flows nearby, really.
Blue elderberry may be a small shrub—or grow as tall as 30 feet. A student once asked me about the difference between a tree and a shrub, sending me into a deep philosophical spiral, until I learned trees generally have a single thick trunk, while shrubs tend to have many thin stems—which aptly describes the elderberry’s numerous straight stems. Blue elderberry has serrated, skinny leaves, usually a shiny dark-green, that form a symmetrical pattern. But in summertime the go-to identifiers are the clumps of cloudy blue berries weighing down its branches in heavy skeins. (Also fruiting then is red elderberry, Sambucus racemosa, which has shock-red berries.)
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Berries are preceded by lacy bunches of white flowers in spring that release a rich aroma, a bit like a subdued jasmine. At least 23 species of butterflies and moths likely feast on the nectar and pollen. Other insects known to frequent elderberries include tiny, slender winged insects called thrips—the thought of which may make gardeners shiver, as some hungry species leave silvery scars and curling leaves in their wake on other plants. Fear not: thrips have been documented not only pollinating elderberries but increasing their fruit output. If you find yourself in the Central Valley, look for small holes in elderberry stems—signs of the endangered valley elderberry longhorn beetle, which lives its whole life on the plant.
Many birds are huge elderberry fans. After passing through a scrub-jay, flicker, or bluebird, a seed’s adventure is just beginning. It’s a patient but particular seed, waiting under the protection of a hard coating for the right conditions. It may remain viable for over a decade.
Native people throughout California have long known about the plant’s exacting germination needs and used fire to stimulate its growth. Gentle fire cracks that hard outer seed coat. Once conditions are just right, the plant takes off. It can reach full size in as little as three years!
The array of Indigenous uses for elderberry, throughout California, is as impressive as the plant’s growth rate. The berries dye baskets, and the branches can make clapper sticks (one Pomo elder told me that elderberry is where the music is stored). Historically, Pomo people along the coast used the plant’s flowering and fruiting to time shellfish gathering. Sage LaPena, a Tunai Wintu and Nomtipom ethnobotanist, says, “Elderberry is one of our most important traditional medicines, and we’ve never stopped using it.” Many Indigenous groups use elderflowers in a fever-reducing tea or in baths to induce sweating.
The next time you’re in the cold and flu aisle of a pharmacy, look at the ingredients of natural cold medicines, and you’re certain to find many that include Sambucus. The plant can be an effective antiviral, antibacterial, antidiabetic, immune-booster, and anti-inflammatory, and a powerful antioxidant, according to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s integrative medicine website.
At Berkeley’s Cafe Ohlone, the Indigenous chefs Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino have used elderberry sauce to balance out a meatball stew as a fine cooking wine would do, soaked quail eggs in elderberry tea, and paired elderberry jam with chia pudding. Recipes for elderberry syrups, jellies, and more are easy to come by online, along with elderflower cordials and liqueurs.
But don’t devour those berries raw. They can cause severe gastrointestinal distress, due to cyanide-containing chemicals that can be destroyed with heat. And if you plan to harvest, please do so responsibly. Don’t take more than you can use, and gather no more than about 10 percent of material from an individual plant, as a rule of thumb.
The elderberry genus provides endless intrigue for armchair taxonomists. Blue elderberry has three scientific names—Sambucus mexicana, Sambucus caerulea, and Sambucus nigra ssp. caerulea. Recently, elderberries have been shifted from one family (honeysuckles) to another (Viburnaceae). Some say the genus has been over-split into more species names than there are species—maybe because it’s so variable in its growth forms, patterns, colors, sizes, and geographic range. You might say the elderberry is too iconic to be contained by categories—though science will keep trying its best.
