Your cart is currently empty!
Blue Elderberry
Sambucus caerulea
Also known as blue elder, blueberry elder, velvet-leaf elder
In stock
Description
Blue elderberry is our west coast native elderberry shrub ranging from Southern Canada down to Northern Mexico. The seeds we are offering come from our local Southern Oregon blue elders.
Blue elder’s berries, leaves, bark and roots are all used medicinally in the same way as its American black elder and European black elder kin. Like black elder, blue elder is a fantastic herbal antiviral. As a food, in my humble opinion, blue elderberries are tastier than black elders and a bit sweeter. I find the blue elderberries more beautiful too, with their almost white bloom when the berries are ripe, that when rubbed off reveals a dark blue berry underneath. The bloom is surely a handy indicator of ripeness, even from a distance.
Speaking of beauty, the blue elder in full bloom is a show stopper, offering abundant clusters of beautiful, elegant, delicate tree flowers in early summer after most other fruit trees have finished blooming. Instead blue elder puts energy into growing leaves and branches first before extending its stunning display skyward.
The blue elders we collect seeds from live in the rain shadow from the more temperate coastal climate and are adapted to our hot dry summers. While these blue elders surely appreciate and thrive with lots of moisture, they are also quite drought hardy and can withstand quite hot and harsh conditions. That being said, they’ll get bigger and produce more flowers and berries with good garden soil and regular moisture.
Sure enough we see blue elders thriving on roadsides with no irrigation. In the mountains blue elders prefer to grow on roadsides, sunny clear-cut forest re-growths with fair moisture, but can also be found on mountain crests where conditions are harsher and the soil soil is dry and lacking in organic matter. Wild blue elders produce just as abundantly as their domesticated counterparts and are adaptable to a wide range of conditions.
Blue elder is also deer resistant, likely due in part to containing hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in all parts of the plant (see health note below) as well as the musky scent the leaves produce. Deer will eat elder leaves and young growth when they are really hungry but likely won’t eat a lot unless they are starving. So young blue elders will need protection, but once established blue elders can fend for themselves with deer. They will also get tall enough to produce leaves and berries well above deer browse height if you don’t prune them lower.
Our family relies on blue elderberries for our medicine during cold season and throughout the year. We enjoy blue elder syrup but blue elderberries also make a fantastic jam. We prefer about 1:1 blue elderberries to apples cooked down to thicken and sweeten it up. We also use some whole flower clusters in our medicine cabinet in the form of tea and tinctures for cold season. Blue elder flowers also make exceptional wine and champagne.
We are excited to offer blue elderberry seeds so that you can start your own blue elderberry shrubs. As seedlings each plant will be its own distinct variety and while they will be fairly similar, you may find some who grow better in your garden or whose berries you like better.
Health Note: Always cook any part of the elder shrub thoroughly for at least 30 minutes before using it for medicine or food, whether berries, bark, leaves or root. Raw elder plants can cause dizziness and vomiting.
Learn more about elderberry food, medicine, lore and gardening in our Elderberry blog post.
Details
Lifecycle: Perennial
Lifespan: 30+ years in ideal conditions
Hardiness zones: 4-8 (USDA)
Habitats: Forest edges, roadsides and clearings
Plant size: 15 ft wide x 20 ft tall
Light: Full sun to part shade
Soil: All soil types, well draining
Water: Moist soils preferred, can handle some drought
Seeds per packet: 25+ seeds
Seed Starting
Starting blue elders from dry seed is more advanced than other tree seeds and requires patience because dry elderberry seed often requires at least a double moist-cold stratification period to germinate.
Here are a few options for stratifying your blue elder seeds:
- In climates that experience cold winters, allow the seeds to go through two natural winters sowed in place in a well prepared and marked bed or nursery pot.
- Or give the seeds a 30 day warm-moist treatment, followed by 180 days cold-moist stratification.
- Or give the seeds a 30 day warm-moist treatment, followed by 90 day cold-moist stratification period, followed by 30 day warm-moist period, and then a final 90 day cold-moist stratification period.
After stratification plant the seeds 1/4-1/2″ deep. Blue elder is a cool temperature germinater and will germinate in late winter, or early spring depending where you live, before many other tree seeds will germinate.
Cultivation
Blue elder is one of the first perennials to slowly start leafing out here in late winter in early January. In colder climates that may be delayed but Elder is still very cold tolerant and early to start putting on new growth for the season.
Seedlings are fairly precocious and can start flowering and fruiting in just 2-4 years from seed under ideal conditions.
Blue elders are easily prunable to any height you desire. Older elders will grow a thick trunk and produce a short tree form, but it also produces numerous suckers from the base of the trunk and even further from the plant. Some people coppice all the trunks to the ground every few years, or simply thin out older trunks on a regular basis to keep the tree shorter and easier to harvest. Its really up to you!
If left unpruned blue elder can eventually form a thicket of canes and trunks extending from the original root crown.
Harvest
The berries are ripe when they turn dark blue to a dusty pale blue, almost white color. We prefer to harvest the whole cluster of berries with one snip into our harvest container. The berries can be fiddly to remove from the stems. One trick is to freeze the clusters, stems and all. The next day take them out of the freezer and hold over a bowl as you remove the berries from the stems. They come off much easier!
Blue elder wood is quite brittle and incredibly strong so its not going to make a good climbing tree. Although I will sometimes carefully climb older trees for harvesting, taking care to distribute my weight carefully on the stoutest trunks.
For the most part I am carefully bending down first or second year branches who are still fairly flexible, allowing me to harvest berries that are otherwise too high to reach without a ladder.
Propagation
The easiest way to propagate blue elder is from a root cutting.
Like black elders blue elders also propagate from cuttings. But they aren’t quite as easy to start from cuttings as blue elders. Timing is more critical and the ideal time is in June before the flowers are open.
Seed Saving
Wet process the berries and seeds with fermentation, decant the seeds then plant/stratify the fresh moist seeds immediately for best germination.
Additional information
Weight | 0.007 lbs |
---|---|
Dimensions | 4.5 × 3.25 × .05 in |
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.