Elderberry - a not-so-new herb is rediscovered

Better Nutrition, Oct, 1997 by Steven Foster

When I started my career at the Sabbath-day Lake Maine Shaker Community nearly 25 years ago, the first spring I was there I harvested elder flowers for a peppermint leaf-elder flower combination product that we sold. This particular combination is a standard American herbal folk remedy for the treatment of fevers due to colds and flus. The flowers were very easy to harvest. I simply tied a burlap sack around my chest with some bailing twine, and walked around the elder patch, bending the flat-topped flower heads near the opening of the sack and shaking vigorously. The flowers fell off easily into the sack. Since their moisture content is quite low, I spread them to dry on a screen in the shade and they dried in 24 hours.

Elder, also known as elderberry or elder flower is a familiar plant group to most in North America. Elder is a member of the genus Sambucus of the honeysuckle family, known to botanists as Caprifoliaceae. There are about 20 species of shrubs native to temperate and subtropical regions. In eastern North America, Sambucus canadensis is a very common species, found along roadsides, field edges, and farm yards.

I remember, too, being curious as a child about the elder plants that grew near the barn in the back of our old colonial home in Maine. We, as children, were fascinated by them because the stems were hollow and an older neighborhood child showed us how to make whistles out of them. The only problem was they tasted bad, and for good reason. All fresh elder plant parts, including stalks, flowers, and fruits are considered potentially toxic. When dried or cooked this toxicity subsides. Elderberries are also known to accumulate nitrates from the soil. The leaves, stems, and roots contain cyanogenic glycosides. Ingestion of these plant parts can cause severe diarrhea.

Elder flowers have been widely available for many years, and if you look in herbal texts, will find them listed to help reduce fevers and help induce nausea. I remember when I first tried the old peppermint/elder flower decoction recipe for a fever. It tasted so bad that my body rejected it almost as soon as it hit the bottom of my stomach. Elder "tea" went to the back burner of my mind, I thought forever. Now, however, an extract of European elderberry Sambucus nigra has emerged as one of the 1990s' herbal answers for influenza.

Elderberry: where does it grow?

Let's take a look at some of the source plants. In the United States we have the common eastern elderberry S. canadensis and the red-berried circumboreal S. racemosa occurring from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, south to the mountains of North Carolina in the east and Arizona in the West. In addition, blue elderberry S. cerulea, is found in valley bottoms and foothill slopes from British Columbia to western Montana, south to California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Sambucus ebulus and S. mexicana are also listed for the United States.

There are three or four species in Europe including S. ebulus, S. racemosa, and S. nigra. Sambucus siberica, mostly an Asian species also occurs in western (European) Russia. The European elderberry S. nigra, also known as black elder, occurs throughout much of Europe except in extreme northern areas. It is also widely cultivated in Europe for its edible fruits, hence its exact natural range is difficult to determine. It has also been grown in American horticulture and occasionally escaped from cultivation.

Elderberry in America

In American herbal traditions, the primary species used has been S. canadensis which also enters the herb trade, primarily in the form of dried flowers. Traditionally, the flowers, fruits, bark, and leaves have all been used as folk remedies. American Indian groups used the inner bark tea as a diuretic, strong laxative, as well as to induce vomiting. A poultice of the bark was used to treat headaches, pain, swelling, cuts, boils, and to promote healing on a newborn's navel. A wash made from the decocted bark was applied externally to treat skin eruptions, old ulcers, and eczema.

Using elderberry

Elderberries and elder flowers are generally used in cooked or dried form. As mentioned earlier, when fresh, the bark, root, leaves, and unripe berries are considered toxic and can cause severe diarrhea. Generally, the fresh fruits are considered edible only when cooked or dried. Flowers can be dipped in batter and fried or eaten in pancakes and fritters.

Black elderberry has long been used in European folk medicine, like its American counterpart, for treating colds and fevers. The flowers of S. nigra are the subject of a positive German therapeutic monograph and are allowed to be used to induce sweating in cases of fevers (diaphoretic), as well as to increase bronchial secretion in the treatment of colds. Most chemical research on the genus Sambucus has involved S. nigra.

Lectins: a focus of research

Special compounds known as lectins from S. nigra are widely used in biological testing assays to measure the action of other chemicals. If you look at the scientific literature on elder, particularly S. nigra, the vast majority of studies that will result from a computer search relate to compounds called lectins. Lectins from elder species have special characteristics of binding to compounds in the blood. Hence, they are the subject of research for various tests used in blood typing, and other blood-related tests. Such high-tech uses of elder compounds are rarely cited in the popular literature on elderberry.