Photo Credit: Kathleen Scavone
A drive around Lake County may gift you with showy cream colored elderberry shrubs in bloom. They really stand out against the just-turning-blonde hillsides. Elderberry blooms are fragrant with a clean, soft scent that you can smell before you see. This deciduous plant is found in wet or moist meadows or open forests. Wildlife is attracted to elderberry, including songbirds such as Western bluebird, scrub jay, grosbeaks, Stellar jays, and Bullock’s orioles. Bears, deer, and elk dine on elderberries, and the flowers attract butterflies and bees.
I feel honored to live in a place where the past surrounds us. The land is constantly restoring itself and healing us along with the ‘job’ it performs as carbon, light, and water carry out their daily miracles. It’s easy to see how the first people of the area were able to thrive and connect to their surroundings on such a deep level. Many still do. Can you imagine tending, singing to, and caring for a myriad of plant life? The lives of the Pomo, Miwok, Wappo, Patwin, and Yuki people who populated what is now Lake County had plants for medicine, ceremony, food, and music.
Elderberry was used for clapper sticks when indigenous people split the stem of the plant to clap the sticks together for round-house ceremonies, with songs and dances. This plant was important for creating whistles and flutes when holes were drilled into the hollowed-out limbs. Indigenous people sometimes used elderberry branches for arrow shafts.
These shrubs may grow up to 20 feet tall. Their inflorescences grow in a panicle composed of cymes, or flat-topped clusters. Later on, when the fruit develops, you’ll see frosty blue or purple berries. As with any wild food, be sure you know what you are picking or eating beforehand. Elderberry fruit contains alkaloids which can cause nausea, and those with red berries are toxic and should definitely be avoided. Fresh elderberries contain an abundance of Vitamin C.
Medicinally, elderberry flowers were used to make a tea by indigenous people to aid in the treatment of fevers, headaches, arthritis, and other conditions. The flowers and leaves were also used as a poultice for wounds or sprains, while the berries were used to make a salve that helped relieve pain from burns.
Elderberry fruit was once used both dry and fresh. Today, some enjoy making jams, jellies, syrups, or wine. The University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources website explains that North America’s indigenous people across the state made use of this versatile plant in many ways and still do today. This special plant serves as a reminder of the miraculous seasons and its rhythms. Like the balm that music or art provides, nature touches our lives in countless ways.
