Black Elderberry - Ornamental And Medicinal Plant

Sambucus nigra - useful properties and features of cultivation

The word friendship is the slang of modern youth, but elderberry is, on the contrary, the most famous and ancient word. Red elderberry is poisonous, everyone knows about it from childhood. But there is also a black elderberry.

However, despite the fact that the famous agronomist A.T. Bolotov mentioned it in his writings back in the 18th century, and in the 19th century, Professor V.K. Varlich entered the black elderberry into the "Complete Register of Medicinal Plants in Russia" - despite its long history, the black elderberry, as a fruit plant with valuable medicinal properties, is still practically not in demand in Russia.

Many shoppers literally recoil when invited to buy black elderberry plants. The image of a poisonous red relative stands so strongly before their eyes. Hundreds of books and reference books, describing in detail the beneficial properties of fruits, flowers, leaves, shoots, roots of the black elderberry, remain unclaimed by our population.

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On the contrary, in Europe, the useful properties of the black elderberry have long been appreciated, they considered it a sacred tree and called it a plant that prolongs life, although the black elderberry, rather, is still a shrub tree with a height of 3 to 6 meters.

Black elderberry in the wild is found almost all over the world: in Europe, Asia, America and even Africa. In Europe and America, cultivated varieties are bred, in Russia, the black elderberry is grown at the level of populations consisting of various forms in their localities. However, this does not reduce its healing properties.

The most valuable medicinal raw materials are elderberry flowers. Infusions of dried flowers are used for colds, bronchitis, sore throat, and burns. Decoction of flowers helps in the treatment of rheumatism and gout. In Europe, a syrup made from elderberry flowers and further diluted with water is a commercial success among soft drinks. And one of the Irish legends claims that if a girl wipes her face with dew from these flowers, she will prolong her youth and preserve her beauty for a very long time. Infusion and juice from fruits are used for rheumatism, kidney disease, cough, colds, neuralgia.

Berries are also used to make medicinal jams, jellies, sweets, baby food, and intensely colored juice is used as a natural dye for wines, to give them a light nutmeg flavor. You can endlessly enumerate the healing properties of black elderberry, for example, developments are underway to create an extract of black elderberry, which may well be an effective means of neutralizing the H5N1 infection of the avian influenza virus. By the way, the drug Sinupret, purchased in our local pharmacy recently, produced in Germany, which is intended for the treatment of chronic rhinitis, contains black elderberry flowers.

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The various properties of the black elderberry have given rise to many stories and legends. For example, many in Europe believe that it is the tree on which Judas Iscariot hanged himself after the betrayal of Christ. The property of repelling insects was previously successfully used by tying elderberry branches to the horse's mane.

It is also interesting that cats are not indifferent to black elderberry, this is due to the fact that its bark contains valeric acid. Our cat Muska scratched the trunks of several black elderberry plants so that we had to save them with fences. By the way, fish also like the specific aroma of elderberry. On the Don, anglers use its berries as bait and do not complain about biting. By the way, the soldiers wrote letters from the front, preparing ink from black elderberries, and wartime children studied in schools with such ink.

Particular attention should be paid to the decorative properties of this plant. Although they write that it needs alkaline soil, my elderberry has been growing for the tenth year on acidic sandy soil and is quite safe. It also withstands shading well and in June, for a feast for the eyes of the entire street, from behind the fence, parading large, up to 20 cm in diameter, white inflorescences, slightly smelling of almonds. I am secretly proud that such beauty suddenly appears from behind the garage, next to the gate. Flowering is long, up to three to four weeks.

But the beauty of flowering passes, and the fruits should be tied - black berries. But it was not there. Many questions arise: why on a large bush, which bloomed so profusely, suddenly only a few fruits were set? The fact is that the black elderberry is a cross-pollinated plant, and for fruiting it is necessary to plant at least two plants. Of course, the second plant must be taken from some other population, or grown from seed. Plants grown from cuttings from one individual will not be pollinated with each other.

Black elderberry winters well in the conditions of the Moscow region, with dignity endured the forty-degree frosts of the winter of 2005-2006. I think it should take its rightful place in your garden. I will send you the seedlings. They will bear fruit. Buy 2-3 seedlings. They need to be planted at a distance of two meters. I also send seeds of Little Leaf cucumbers (Small leaf - USA), Vigna beans with pods up to 1 m, Marina pumpkins from Chioggia (Sea monster - Italy) and other rare crops, seedlings of frost-resistant varieties of apple trees, pears, grapes and other garden plants. Send an envelope with a return address to receive the catalog: 140181, Moscow region, Zhukovsky, PO Box 135, Yuri Valentinovich Petrov.