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Hi, it's the eleventh of September and today we're looking at the Elder tree.
Ok, well this an Elder tree here. Um...you can see it's got these... these leaves that
have er... five leaflets on each leaf stalk. They may vary from three to seven leaflets,
but usually there's five. And er... the bark is er... quite furrowed
for a young tree and quite soft. The white flowers appear in the early Summer
and by late Summer, they've become the familiar dark berries.
And er... unfortunately these... these Elder trees are suffering a bit with a die-back
disease. Um... I'm trying to find some with some berries still on. Um... I'll see what
I can do. Ok, we've got a slightly more um... healthy
looking tree. I mean you can see it's still... still not doing too great, but um... hopefully
it'll be alright again next year. Now er... Elder trees have a lot of um...
magical associations. They were believed to harbour witches, and contain evil spirits
and this probably goes back to um.... Christianity demonising pagan religions. They've got really
old history of er... pagan religious associations. Um... too many to go into really, but um...
for instance in er.. Old English and Danish, I think they were called um.. Hilde Moer,
which means um...Mother Elder and there's a kind of Demi-Goddess that was the Goddess
of Elder trees. Er... now the only really edible parts of
Elder are the er... flowers and the berries. Um... the leaves and stems... even the stems
on the berries and flowers are slightly toxic and um... they contain cyanogenic glucosides
in a chemical called Sambunigrin and um... when these are in the body, enzymes react
with them and um... release Hydrogen-cyanide. So um... they are a bit toxic.
And er... I'm sure you're aware you can make wine out of the flowers and the berries. Um...
yeah, quite often you don't even need yeast, cos they've usually got quite a lot of natural
yeast blush. Now, the wood of Elder it's quite lightweight
and it's quite strong and it's got various uses but um.. it used to be known as er...
Pipe-wood, because, I don't know if you can see there, it's hollow inside. Well there's
usually pith in there, which incidentally, you can use as a candle wick if you can get
it out in one piece. And um... yeah, if you're into your bushcraft and stuff like that, then
this makes a really good base for um... a hearth base, if you're using the drill and
bow method of um... firelighting. Now er.. as I said, human history with Elder
goes back a long way and there's a lot medicinal uses claimed for... for Elder. Um.. mostly
using the flowers and the berries and um... sometimes the bark as well. Um... but er...
yeah, there has been a... actually been a scientific study done on the berries and found
that they er... they um... aid recovery from the flu - quite significantly so, so um...
there you go. And er.. there is one thing I've never tried
with um... with Elder berries. Um... you can use the juice... well for a start it makes
quite a good dye. It's quite... it's quite a stable dye that doesn't wash out too easily,
but um... yeah, you can also use them... use them, to make litmus paper, um... which I
might give a go. Um... get some acid-free paper. Usually sketch pad paper's acid free
and er... soak it in the juice and er... see if it works. So I'm gonna take these and give
that a go. Ok, so I've got my er... homemade litmus papers
here. And er... a glass with bicarbonate of soda and water in it. And a glass with some
vinegar in it. Um.. I tried... I had a go to see what would happen with one of these
er... yesterday and um... it's dried out and you can see it's change of colour is still
apparent, but um... it's much more apparent when it's wet. So I'll... I'll show you what
happens. Ok, bicarbonate of soda first... Ok, I don't know if you can see that. It's
kind of starting to... to take on a... a greenish tinge in the bicarbonate of soda. Um... give
it a go in the vinegar. See what happens... And er... yeah, you can see that's... that's
gone much more red. So yeah, it does actually work. There you go.
So er... there you have it. The er... the Elder tree. A nice under-storey plant in...
in most woodlands in the UK. And as you can see... well I don't know if you can see that
very well, but there's... there are loads of berries up there.