Since you can’t copywrite nutritional facts about Elderberries, I totally didn’t steal this from Wolfram Alpha.
Here’s part two of my special series on growing food and harvesting things accidentally. This time, I trash-talk elderberries. Part one is here.
Why are they called Elderberries if they age so poorly?
The first thing to know about Elderberries is that there is a lot of hype about them.
Human beings are prone to a great deal of hyperbole. I, myself, am a human being, and I may well be one of the most hyperbolic people you will ever meet. Nobody has as much hyperbole as I do. I have profound hyperbolima. I won the Vince Lombardi Trophy on the last three Hyperbole Sundays.
One of the things humans are prone to do because of their hyperbolic nature is to prefix the word "super" with things to declare their ability to exceed expectations. Here are three examples:
Superman is a fictional prescient being who lives on Earth and exceeds the standard physics that retrains the local beings. He flies, he bends steel, he is bulletproof and all that. A normal man can't do that, so one who can do this kind of stuff must be a "super" man.
Supermarkets are markets that are much, much larger than traditional markets. While some markets are highly specialized, offering wide varieties of few things, other markets carry only a few varieties of many things. Supermarkets are markets that carry a wide variety of many things. Normal markets are smaller, have fewer parking lots, and are less likely to embrace anti-competitive practices on a large scale [citation needed]; hence they are "super" markets.
Supervisors are managers who make more money than regular workers because they are responsible for those who work beneath them. Their job is to watch over the work of others and ensure that they don't organize in a way that would improve their quality of living. Visors are simple observational devices worn by plucky engineers on spaceships in socialist utopias and, therefore, have no interest in keeping the working man oppressed. "Super" visors are -- well, never mind, this got stupid.
The point is someone in the great marketing zeitgeist decided that people were unaware of the non-scientifically proven properties of certain types of food. To improve the margins of those who could corner the markets on those types of food, they declared them "Super" foods.
“Elderberries have some pretty neat properties”
Elderberries are one such "superfood." While entire libraries have been written on the historical, religious, nutritional, and anthropological manifestations that have resulted in us believing one food is superior to another, we can see that Elderberries have some pretty neat properties.
First, they are tiny berries.
And second, much like people, there is significant debate on how elderberries experience gender.
Dad joke incoming: These cisplants grew up here. If they’d been moved from a previous location, they’d be transplants.
YO, DAWG? ARE YOU SAYING ELDERBERRIES PLAY WITH BARBIES?
“It’s reductive and demeaning to say that there are “boy” plants and there are “girl” plants.”
It is as if thousands of voices suddenly all cried out at once, demanding I retract the notion that elderberries experience gender. Science calls plants that house their male and female flowers on separate plants "Dioecious." Kiwis, asparagus, currents, and spinach are just some plants with male and female flowers exclusively across one plant or another. It's reductive and demeaning to say that there are "boy" plants and there are "girl" plants-- but in the case of Elderberries, most people argue that the plants are "Monocious." Monocious plants grow flowers that are both male and female. So, technically, it's reductive and demeaning to say there are "boy" flowers and "girl" flowers. Either way, the greenhouse that sold me my elderberry plants told me they were Dioecious-- a fact debated on the internet and proven incorrect by the fact that my two elderberry bushes both flower and produce fruit.
This confusion explains why, when I impulsively bought an elderberry bush to fill in the fence line between my weird neighbor's house and my garden, I ended up buying two. Well played, unnamed garden center, well played.
So why grow them at all?
So, you may ask yourself why one would even consider growing elderberries. And this is a good line of questioning. There are many folk remedies out there that tout elderberry as a healing medicine. And there is a nice, ornamental feature to the plant.
“Adding elderberries to your yard will hugely increase the number of drunk birds hanging around.”
And, a real bonus in my garden is that because Elderberries actually ferment while they hang on the vine, adding elderberries to your yard will hugely increase the number of drunk birds hanging around.
For me, it was because I didn't like the idea of filling my fence line with raspberries, which are delicious, easy to grow and harvest, but have thorns. So, when stumbling around in a daze at the local garden center, I saw an elderberry plant. Vaguely remembering that there were supposed medicinal properties in elderberries and then remembering that I like tea, I woke up from a fugue state with a pair of elderberry plants in the back of my minivan.
That happens more regularly than I care to admit, actually.
I’ve been told that I garden like Hunter S. Thompson, which I took as a compliment, even though I’ve never used that much mescaline.
Anyway, my wonton dislike of thorns manifested in purchasing a pair of elderberry plants five years ago. I am currently producing a fairly decent crop of elderberries that are markedly different from raspberries in that they are not delicious and can poison me.
“ Elderberries, if picked too soon, contain enough hydrocyanic acid to cause a decent degree of illness.”
That's right. Elderberries, if picked too soon, contain enough hydrocyanic acid to cause a decent degree of illness if eaten raw. The good news is that you aren't likely to make a pig of yourself eating at the elderberry bush because they taste gross. In fact, I prefer the taste of serviceberries when I'm looking to eat something that grows in my backyard that will make me sick. However minor the threat of poisoning may or may not be, one should pick only the ripest elderberries and clean out all the leaves and stems from your harvest before you shove them into your dehydrator.
Everybody knows that Elderberry tea is the prefered liquid of the world’s largest rodent.
The berries are easy enough to reduce to something useable and potentially less poisonous. Pick ‘em once they’re about 30 seconds from fermenting, throw ‘em in a pot, crush with enough force to extract the juice, but not so much force that you crack open the seeds and spill out their poison. Then run the whole damn thing trough a coffee filter (or mesh strainer, if you’re fancy. Cook it down until it’s thick and gooey. Good job, you just made Elderberry syrup. Dilute it in hot water and enjoy Elderberry Tea. I found that the yeild I get from two bushes at any given harvest is rarely ever more than enough to make about 4 oz. of syrup.
Learn more:
Are you looking for more concrete and helpful information about elderberries? There are lots of people who are experts on the subject of growing elderberries.
The University of Vermont Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture published an incredible report on the viability of elderberries for commercial farming in 2016. ElderberryGuideComplete.pdf (uvm.edu)
The University of Wisconsin has published a similar guide:
Growing Currants, Gooseberries, and Elderberries in Wisconsin; however, you are warned that this document is primarily concerned with terrifying descriptions of all the diseases your elderberries and currents can contract.WebMD, where semi-literate people turn to be afraid they are dying, suggests you might not want to eat elderberries so you don’t get too healthy.