The American Black Elder or Elderberrry is a common shrub that inhabits bogs, swamps, marshes, bottomlands, along watercourses, and moist woods from Nova Scotia and southeast Canada, New England down through all of Florida to eastern Texas up through much of Oklahoma & Kansas & Nebraska, areas in the Dakotas into southern Manitoba. Stout, smooth, waxy twigs and stems with compound leaves of 5 to 11 leaflets, usually 7, and only a poor yellow-green fall color. Fragrant flat-topped flower clusters of 6 to 10 inches wide in June-July. Small globular purple-black berries in August-September loved by birds and small mammals and people; often made into jams, jellies, and wine. Fast growing, grows in heavy clay soils and yet tolerates heat and drought. Easy to transplant with shallow, fibrous root system, but it does ground sucker, at least in very moist soils. It is not a dirty, messy plant, but yet not real clean and neat, but it is a good shrub for landscapes. It is sold by large, diverse nurseries and native plant nurseries. I find a few planted in regular homeowner yards, but once again landscape designers and architects use it much more in professional conventional landscapes or in naturalistic landscapes.

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The book, "How to Know the Wildflowers" (1922) by Mrs William Starr Dana gives us quite a bit of historical information about this plant. The author notes that the plant borders the lanes and streams and blooms in early summer. Later in the year, the plant produces dark berries from which "elderberry wine is brewed by the country people". The fine white wood is easily cut and used for pegs and skewers. She also claims a decoction of the leaves can protect delicate plants from caterpillars. Regarding the name, she says the "white pith can be easily removed from the stems, hence the old English name of bore-wood." She further explains that the name elder is probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aeld" meaning fire, and refers to the use of the hollow branches in "blowing up a fire".

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