Species Spotlight: Chokecherry and Blue Elderberry

Blue Elderberry (Sambucus nigra var. caerulea)

One of the most widely distributed shrubs in North America and Europe, the blue elderberry shows up as a possible fossil in John Day’s Clarno Nut Beds, incompletely identified but intriguing: fossil evidence points to a circum-global forest in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere sometime during the Eocene, 56-32.9 million years ago; in other words, this shrub really gets around.

Names too suggest origin stories: Sambuca was an ancient Greek wind instrument, referencing the use of twigs to make whistles, and elder comes not from “old” but from the Anglo-Saxon “aeld”, meaning fire, because hollow stems of the shrub were used as bellows.

The flowers, bark, leaves, twigs and roots are a native pharmacopeia, and the berries are an important late-season food gift. Well-loved by bears, game birds, squirrels, deer, and elk, the shrubs provide food and nesting territory for a plethora of songbirds.

Widely used in riparian restoration projects, they are thriving in ONDA’s collaborative plantings with the Northern Paiute at Juntura along the Malheur River. Part of the desert stream’s thin green line, they provide streamside shade, sheltering other plant species, and helping to stabilize banks with their roots.

This 3-20’ shrub has yellow-white flowers in flat sprays that rise above compound pointy shaped leaves, followed by blackish-blue berries. If you have the opportunity, raise a glass to this remarkable shrub, known and treasured by cultures across millennia spanning the globe, and right here in our desert backyard.