By Gay Ingram
August/September 1994
When we first moved out to the country eleven years ago, a friend asked me if there were any elder shrubs growing on the property. At the time, I didn’t know what elder was, but she was long familiar with the plant and its uses.
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After consulting herb books so that I would know what to look for, I found American elder (Sambucus canadensis) in a neighbor’s abandoned pasture. I painstakingly transplanted a young plant, which eventually grew into a vigorous shrub, and since then elder has established itself elsewhere on my property as well. Each year I eagerly await its harvest of sweet-smelling blossoms and edible purple berries.
As time passed and I learned more about herbs, I became aware of the importance herbalists of old gave to my plant’s European counterpart, S. nigra. I ran across many references to the wonders of elder-flower water, and I wanted to try making some myself.
In A Modern Herbal (1931), for example, Maud Grieve states that elder-flower water “in our great-grandmothers’ days was a household word for clearing the complexion of freckles and sunburn. . . . Every lady’s toilet table possessed a bottle of the liquid.”
Mrs. Grieve gives specific instructions for home preparation.
Fill a large jar with Elder blossoms, pressing them down, the stalks of course having been removed previously. Pour on them 2 quarts of boiling water and when slightly cooled, add 1 1/2 oz. of rectified spirits. Cover with a folded cloth, and stand the jar in a warm place for some hours. Then allow it to get quite cold and strain through muslin. Put into bottles and cork securely.
That sounded simple enough, so one June I gathered a sackful of blooming flower heads. I removed the larger stems and spread them out on the screens in my drying shed. I was glad those flowers were drying away from the house because, as days passed, they took on a distinctive odor. I hesitated to go near the shed. As the fragrance intensified, the flowers darkened. I poured the overpowering brown mass into a plastic container, put the lid on tightly, and forgot all about them. When I finally dumped them out, they were certainly beyond any usefulness.
The next year, as the frothy blossoms began to reappear, I decided to try again. Returning to A Modern Herbal, I read, “The flowers are not easily dried of good color.” If Mrs. Grieve’s elder flowers took on a “dingy brownish-yellow” color as they dried, maybe I was on the right track after all. This time I took care to remove as much stem as possible, which took me two hours of concentrated effort.