John Heinerman reports that the Choctaw Indians mixed elderberry juice with honey and smoothed the resulting "salve" over burns and skin eruptions. For migraines, they employed the fresh fruits, mixed with hot salt, applied as a compress to the forehead.
Elder flowers treated many of the same problems as the berries did. Those blooms take on a surprisingly pleasant odor when dried. The pale-skinned belle of the past always kept a jar of elderflower water on her dressing table. This excellent concoction would bleach her complexion, soothe sunburn or headache, and quiet skin eruptions such as pimples or poxes. Like the berries, elderflower tea also treated colds, flu, sore throat, fevers, and burns. The flowers were sometimes baked into flannel cakes and muffins as well.
Elderberry juice boiled with alum made a violet color for artists, just as the roots would make black and the leaves green. That juice would also darken the hair.
Livestock seem to have the same equivocal view of the elder as people once did. Sheep and cows will eat the plant, but horses and goats avoid it. Wild birds love the berries, but those fruits are toxic to most domestic fowl. The leaves will repel insects as well as mice. A tea made from the shoots also fends off blight from fruit trees.
I'm fond of elderberry jelly and even fonder of the fact that the plant grows quite contentedly without any assistance from me. In other words, it gives without expecting anything in return. That can only make it blessed!
Note: Image of American Elder by National Geographic, Photo of Red Elder by Michael Moore, Image of Red Elder by Mary Vaux Walcott, all courtesy of the SW School of Botanical Medicine at http://chili.rt66.com/hrbmoore/HOMEPAGE/...
