Dwarf elder
Sambucus ebulus
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.
Emergency
The herbaceous double of elder, forming dense patches on damp verges and ditches. Identical from afar, toxic up close, and responsible for poisonings among people who pick berries without looking at the stem.
Roadsides and waste ground · Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture
Also known asdanewort, dwarf elderberry
How to tell it
It has no trunk: it comes up from the ground each year and dies back in winter. Its berries face upwards on a raised plate, not hanging. A strong unpleasant smell throughout.
What it is confused with
Elder
Sambucus nigra
Look for the trunk. Elder is a woody shrub with bark; dwarf elder is a tall herb straight out of the ground. And elder's berries hang, dwarf elder's point at the sky.
What it is for
None as food
It was used as a dye and in folk medicine, always cautiously, and the berries cause vomiting and severe diarrhoea.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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