wrote in message
oups.com...
QUESTION 2. Some people on this group say that elderberry is
poisonous. (But some stores sell elderberry jelly, etc.)
To quote Martin Tom Brown on this group from 1995:

there is a variety of elderberry in eastern canada that is very
poisonous,
and a variety that is actually quite good for you. very few people seem
to
know about them.

So my question is: How do I tell whether my elderberry bush is
poisonous, or beneficial, to humans?

Avoid elderberries species with red fruit growing in rounded, instead of
flat clusters. They may make you sick. Hercules' club is a shrub or small
tree with feather-compound leaves that looks a little like the common
elderberry. It has flat clusters of poisonous, black berries, often arranged
in a ring, and a short, unbranched, thorny trunk. Elderberries are
thornless.

My grandmother had an elderberry tree (more like a clump of trees) in her
backyard and I don't remember any suckering. She called it a Mai (Danish for
the month of May) Tree. When it bloomed she always picked some of the
blossom clusters to brew tea. She swore if you had a cup of Mai tree blossom
tea every day for a week when it first started blooming you would stay
healthy. She lived to 98, who knows, she may have been on to something.

When I lived in Montana I picked elderberries every year to make jelly and
syrup, my neighbor made wine. All quite tasty.

Where did you get your elderberry bush? You say you bought it, can't you ask
somebody where you bought it? Did it have a tag with a proper Latin name
(not always an accurate source). If you want to be absolutely safe you
could always wait till it bloomed and then take a branch to a nursery,
extension agency, horticulture agent, master gardener, etc.



Val