There are some plants in our ancestral surroundings that were once known to everyone, along with the delicious foods that result from them, but which today are often an absolute mystery to children in the big cities. Not yet for the children in the country. But the children growing up in the country are becoming fewer and fewer. If we don’t slowly begin to introduce the whole variety of native flora into our home gardens, our descendants will probably only know apple trees very soon. So it’s time for the black elder in the garden. Here’s how to plant, care for and cut it.
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Black elder and other species
The black elderberry is the elderberry that is meant and harvested when the Bavarians want to make elderberry cakes, the North German elderberry pancakes or lilac berry jam, the Swabian elderberry cakes and people in other regions of Germany Hollerschöberl, in short “our elderberry”.
It is by far the best-known elder, with an exceptionally good reputation: An elder in the garden used to be considered the perfect house tree, with quite a few talents. He should be able to ward off black magic and witches, protect against fire and lightning and protect against mosquitoes. People under the elder should also be protected from snake bites.
It is more interesting that the well-disposed spirits of the house should set up their abode in the elderberry. That’s why the saying goes that you should take your hat off to every elderberry bush. You could try to see if he likes it, but first to the purely existential needs of black elderberry.
Worth knowing about the elderberry
The elder poses a number of puzzles to botanists when it comes to classification, for example: The famous natural scientist Carl von Linné defined the genus name Sambucus in 1753. However, the position of this genus in the overall system of plants has been disputed for a long time.
The Sambucus were long classified in the honeysuckle family until it was realized that they are not as similar to them as thought. That was around 1900. Now they wanted to regroup the Sambucus. However, since no suitable plant family was found, they were simply chosen as the new independent plant family Sambucaceae. Until new molecular genetic findings around the turn of the millennium led to the Sambucus genus ending up in the musk herb family.
With the puzzles of classification, of course, puzzles also develop when it comes to naming. The discrepancies continue from genus to species. It is no longer certain how many Sambucus species there are, because some researchers regard some Sambucus species as independent. Other researchers classify them as subspecies of another Sambucus species.
Today it is assumed that there are 10 to 40 Sambucus species that (quite achievable) make you want “more elderberry in the German garden”. For “garden purposes” you probably won’t care much whether a beautiful blue elder as “Sambucus nigra subsp. cerulea” or “Sambucus cerulea”. The main thing is that you can find the seeds under one of these terms if you want to grow a specimen of the extraordinarily beautiful blue elderberry (“Blue Elderberry”) for your garden.
The native grape elder (Sambucus racemosa) can not only bring ornament to the garden in its original form with its bright red fruits in dense, round grapes, but is also available in the variation further east, red elder Sambucus tigranii, as stinking elder Sambucus pubens or pubescens and as Japanese elder Sambucus sieboldiana. There are many more exciting elderberry varieties to discover.
Plant black elder
The location for a black elder should be chosen carefully. It grows powerfully sprawling with strong branching and can reach a height of more than 10 meters. Its shallow root system will spread widely in the approximately two decades of its lifetime.
So it needs space in a location that many other plants would outragedly refuse. The black elder is not only native to us. It is also extremely robust, undemanding and frost hardy without any problems even in cold corners of Germany. It also grows in Siberia and up to about 1500 m in the Alps. His demands on the location are correspondingly low. Elder also thrives in semi-shade, on fallow land or along roadsides. Choosing an elder as a house tree does not have to fail on a freshly heaped up, nutrient-rich but unbalanced new building soil or the place in the shade of the house.
The elder gladly accepts nitrogen-rich nutrients in the soil. Therefore, you should prepare the soil for planting an elderberry. A good measure of mature compost should be incorporated into the soil. It is best to add a few horn shavings or another organic complete fertilizer.
The best time to plant is in autumn or early spring. If the planting site has been well prepared, your young elderberry bush will certainly grow without any problems if you plant a little too late or too early or if you bought the elderberry bush bare-rooted and not in a pot. If the elderberry bush has already sprout at the time of planting, the shoots in the upper area must be cut back vigorously. Otherwise the elder would have so much to do with caring for the leaf mass that rooting is neglected.
maintenance
As said, black elderberry is very undemanding once established. And even this growth shouldn’t really cause any problems if you don’t let the freshly planted elderberry dry out down to the last root tip immediately afterwards. If you don’t, and it still doesn’t grow, there must be something wrong with the substrate at all. Then there is an examination to that effect.
This is usually not to be expected. Your black elder will be happy to grow, and then there is not much to say about care. An elder does not need to be fertilized or watered. It even tolerates severe summer drought once established.
However, if you have special wishes for your elderberry, more or less cutting care is required.
cut
Especially if you want to see a lot of flowers or fruits, the elder must be trimmed regularly. After planting, you would first have to decide whether you want to grow the elderberry as a shrub or as a small tree. An elder tree is also an interesting shape for many home gardens. The elderberry bush is brought up here by targeted pruning measures to a form that z. B. fits in a front yard.
The free-growing elderberry bush is allowed to develop unhindered in the first year. He will train several long straight shoots. Hopefully these will develop fairly evenly on their own. Actually, your elderberry has a “natural interest” in exactly that. It is difficult to take care of shoots that are too close together. If your elder is not so aware of this and it “shoots across” inharmoniously, you can of course remove the troublemaker instincts.
From these long shoots, the elder forms the flowers and fruits in the second season. This sequence is repeated with each fruit setting. Therefore you have to cut back the harvested shoots. Next year’s harvest will again develop from this year’s long shoots. The elder is pruned in the spring just before it buds. The long shoots that form the basic structure are shortened evenly all around.
The pruning measures for the next few years are about providing space for as many new shoots as possible. The largest and most beautiful blossoms and fruits of the elder develop on the shoots of the current year. If you have a lot of space, you can of course just let the elder grow. Then the long shoots with the new flowers and fruits appear further and further outwards. In both cases, however, the elder should be thinned out occasionally and freed from sick and weak shoots. Also from all instincts that are nonsensical, e.g. B. grow inwards.
Propagation by cuttings
If your first black elder has whetted your appetite for more, you may want to add elder to other spots in your garden. This is not a problem. The elder is just as easy to propagate as it is to cultivate. To do this, simply cut sticks from the one-year-old shoots in winter (pencil-length cuttings with a pair of buds at the top and bottom, which are defoliated). Three quarters of these sticks are planted in frost-free soil. In the spring they take root and form shoots, which you can straight away pinch off to promote branching.
Cultivating sticks in this way is also useful for growing an elder trunk if the first elder has already developed too many branches. When cutting, you can keep the trunk free of shoots at an early stage.
Harvest elderflowers and elderberries
Although this article is about the elderberry plant for the time being, a brief look at the use of the harvest to whet the appetite is certainly in order: the flat, umbrella-like flower spikes consist of many individual flowers. They appear from May and into July, during which time you can pick them fresh and dip them in thin wine or beer batter, bake them in a pan or fry them and sprinkle with a little sugar – delicious!
From September/October the black elderberries are ready to be harvested. For example, elderberry jelly and jam, elderberry lemonade, elderberry syrup and elderberry sparkling wine are refined, but this is really a separate article, especially since the wrong processing of elderberries can cause serious physical discomfort.
Varieties of black elder
In the meantime, some varieties of black elder have been bred. B. acquire special fruit varieties and ornamental varieties. Well-known cultivars are called Sambucus nigra “Albovariegata” or “Black Beauty”, “Black Lace” and “Haschberg”, “Riese from Voßloch”, “Sampo” or “White Elderberry” (Sambucus nigra var. albida), depending on the variety you can harvest the most magnificent umbels of flowers or the largest or sweetest fruits or enjoy special, attractive leaf colors and fruit colors.
Conclusion
The black elder is a particularly decorative and useful example of native trees and shrubs that are becoming increasingly rare. When you have tried all the delicacies that can be made from black elder, you could then start discovering other types of elder and the healing properties of elder.
