Elderberry

Sambucus nigra

Viburnaceae

Dark berries cooked into syrup at the first winter cough — never eaten raw.

Cooked fruit is a food. Raw berries, leaves, and stems are toxic.

Parts used: Ripe berries (cooked) · Flowers
Traditional notes: Early cold and flu · Feverish chills (flower tea) · Winter cough
Grow · USDA 6b: Shrub, USDA 4–8 (S. nigra / S. canadensis) Hardwood cuttings or nursery plants. Seed is slow. In work: Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep
Harvest: Flowers in early summer (leave some for fruit); berries when fully black.

Two cultivars for fruit set. Birds will beat you to the clusters — net or pick early.
Cook the berries. Raw fruit and the rest of the plant are a problem.
Hardwood cuttings in winter root as if they wanted to.

Safety

Raw consumption Autoimmune disease without advice Unidentified look-alike berries

Lookalikes

Pokeweed — Purple-black berries on red stems look like a pie fruit. Pokeweed is a purge. Elder is a sambucus, and even that wants cooking.

Lore

Cut an elder without asking and, in northern folklore, you answer to a woman who lives in the tree. The flowers make a cordial; the raw berries make a complaint. Hippocrates already knew the plant as a medicine chest with rules.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.