Earlier this year I was thinking about getting some elderberries. Lo and behold they are all over my property. It is funny how things sometimes work out. I would imagine that bred varieties would have better fruit quality but for now I’ll work with what I have.
At least I’m 99% certain they are elderberries. What do you think?
While trailing I also found soapberries. I may bring a plant over to my forest edge just for variety, they were pretty bad. Are there male and female plants of these? I think I saw one of them without berries.
Your wild elderberry look very similar to mine… but my berries are jet black when ripe.
Wild berries are quite small too… tiny really…
The (store bought) york and ranch varieties that I have produce 3x larger berries… but they have proven to be quite succeptable to leaf blight type disease. Considering taking them out now… so much rain this year and they are looking aweful. I got no berries from them last year… and looks like a no this year too.
Those two varieties cant take southern TN heat and humidity… and at times way too much rain.
Pretty sure that mystery bush is a Cornus species. Don’t know which ones are common where you are.
I know nothing about the red fruited elders. Everything here has black/purple berries.
I bought several named varieties some years ago… I’m not convinced that they’re any better than local natives.
I’m not familiar with those types of “elderberry”. The first picture might could be a type of elderberry, different than ours but perhaps related having somewhat similar leaf and stem I guess…, but the leaves with the bumps sure look different than the first picture, totally different leaf(smooth edge, more gloss) and different twig and leaf stem pattern I dont think thats elderberry at all…, compare those two, arent the ones with the bumps different leaf and stem than the first pic?
We have Sambucus pubens (red berried elder) and Sambucus canadensis wild in Wisconsin. The red fruited one does well in Southern WI but is more native to the northern third of my state. Where I work, we grow and sell both in containers. S. canadensis has black fruit and is edible to humans and wildlife . Sambucus pubens is supposed to have some very nasty laxative properties and is not to be safely eaten by humans.
I know of many who pick the native S. canadensis for making jelly, wine and elderberry syrup.
I just took a drive through the forested roads near work and they are everywhere. Tomorrow I’ll pick half a gallon or so to see if a jam is any good. I don’t see any of the recipes talking about removing seeds. Is it a seedy jam? I never had it before.
Next to one of the wild bushes was this overachiever baneberry. They were huge!
ive only found 1 wild patch of black elder growing here and i have one of it growing in my yard now. red elders are like weeds and line old logging roads here. Jesse S lives just south of me and makes jam / juice from the red ones. if theyre processed i guess theyre safe. ive never tried them myself.
I made some red elderberry jelly back in the 1970s and found it very acrid, strongly
musty and unpleasant. Perhaps there are extra preparation steps to avoid that.
I gave that jelly to someone who said they loved it!
I harvested a bunch and did a jelly. I can’t say I care for it all that much. There is 0 fruit smell which I find important on a preserve. It has a vegetable twang to it, reminiscent of rhubarb. Maybe it was not ripe enough? The taste was too strong and acidic so I watered down, sweetened more, added a bit of almond extract, and got it tasting as well as I could, then added clear jel so the diluted stock would set. We’ll see how well it works once that happens.
IMO, you’ve gotta add lemon juice, and quite a bit, to lend any desirable ‘fruit’ flavor to an elderberry concoction.
I usually just make elderberry syrup, with elderberry juice, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon & cloves.
Maybe I made one small batch of elderberry jelly…it was purple, but lem9n juice carried the day.
My last batch using black elderberries turned out good…but it’s been several years and I can’t remember if I added lemon juice or pectin or something…all I remember it tasted exquisite.
There are a very lot of elderberries along I-75 here in KY this year…among other places.
The set ended up like a perfect syrup, thick and buttery, so I’m just going to claim that’s what I was after all along…
I did use half a lemon, it felt acidic enough as it was. I said vegetable twang but it is more green tea like, certainly reminiscent of rhubarb. I find the lack of fruit/berry smell off-putting. It doesn’t smell like much at all. Are black elderberries like this?
I may just get a few more to make a larger batch to ferment and see how that goes. I used to brew beer long ago, I’m familiar with the process. One thing I noticed on elderberry wine recipes is that they throw away everything that floats on the wash water; I picked out the unripe ones but otherwise used most. Hopefully using only very ripe berries (the sinkers) will help.
Red Elderberry fruit is taste-wise totally unlike black or blue elderberry; those can be eaten fresh but may improve with processing. When I made the red elderberry jelly, I also made jelly from Pacific Blue Elderberry, a local native. The blue jelly was very good.
I was digging through my freezer and found a bag of elderberries I collected a couple months ago and so I juiced them and cooked it down and I was disappointed by just how much of a “tea” taste there was. I ate a berry fresh when I collected them and it was just very astringent and sweet, so I was expecting the sweetness to come through.
Is this the expected taste or did I do it wrong somehow, maybe harvested too early or kept them in the freezer too long?
On a side note, I tried some mixology with the end product. I did 1:1 elderberry and autumn olive and it tasted like it would be a great replacement for cranberry sauce. I did 1:1 elderberry and prickly pear juice and it tasted like a fruit punch and totally masked the weird aloe-ish aftertaste of the prickly pear. I also tried 1:1 elderberry with ground cherry and WOW it tasted and smelled almost exactly like honey. So, I think it still has some interesting potential.
