Red elderberry
Sambucus racemosa
Family · Viburnaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
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The mountain elder, which instead of the common elder's flat black clusters bears pyramids of red berries at the height of summer. The red is misleading: these are not eaten raw.
Uplands · Oak woods · Streams and ditches
Also known asred-berried elder
How to tell it
A shrub with opposite leaves of five to seven toothed leaflets. A snapped young twig shows BROWN pith, not the white pith of common elder. The flower head is a pyramid-shaped cluster, taller than wide, not a flat plate. The berries are bright red and ripen in summer, months before common elder's. Rowan, which also bears red clusters in the mountains, is a tree with alternate leaves.
What it is confused with
Rowan
Sorbus aucuparia
A tree with ALTERNATE leaves, not a shrub with opposite ones. The red clusters are flat and drooping, and each fruit carries a five-pointed crown at the tip, like a miniature apple.
Elder
Sambucus nigra
WHITE pith in the young twig, flat plate-like clusters, and BLACK berries ripening only at the end of summer. That is the one with traditional use; this is not.
What it is for
None to encourage
The raw berry and the seed carry cyanogenic glycosides and saponins, causing vomiting and diarrhoea. Unlike common elder, whose flower and cooked fruit have traditional use, this one has no tradition of consumption in the Peninsula.
Where it occurs
Sources
Community
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