40 Fun Facts About Elderberry

Which royal bride's Windsor wedding featured a lemon and elderflower cake decorated with peonies?

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry picked London cake designer Claire Ptak for their 2018 wedding, and the choice was tipped to shape other British brides' cakes.

Which comedy troupe's 1975 film has a French knight hurl an insult about hamsters and elderberries?

Monty Python gave the taunt to a French soldier in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who mocks King Arthur from a castle with increasingly ludicrous insults.

Douro valley elder trees were once ordered uprooted to stop elderberry juice colouring which wine?

Port shippers had been using the juice as a cheap dye, so the Douro Wine Company, established in 1756, banned it and mandated that the trees be torn up.

In which Joseph Kesselring comedy do two kindly aunts serve lonely old men glasses of elderberry wine?

Arsenic and Old Lace has the sisters lace their home-made wine with poison; it opened on Broadway in 1941 and ran for 1,444 performances.

Hollowed elderberry twigs were traditionally used as spiles to tap which trees for making syrup?

Maple sap ran through the twigs once their soft pith was pushed out, and the same hollow stems were also turned into blowguns and syringes.

Which Harry Potter novel did J. K. Rowling consider titling Harry Potter and the Elder Wand?

Deathly Hallows won out as the name of the seventh book, in which a wand of elder wood is one of three legendary objects beside a stone and a cloak.

Which Italian liqueur, often served with three coffee beans, is named from the Latin for elderberry?

Sambuca was first the name of an elderberry liquor created in Civitavecchia around 1850; the modern drink gets its flavour from star anise instead.

Fresh-picked elderberries are mildly poisonous; what simple step makes the dark berries safe to eat?

Cooking them makes the berries fit for jam, jelly and chutney, but the leaves, bark and stems of the plant stay off the menu.

Which biblical figure supposedly hanged himself from an elder, giving the tree a grim nickname?

Judas Iscariot's supposed death gave the elder the name Judas Tree, and Christopher Marlowe repeated the story in his play The Jew of Malta.

Which piano-playing singer released the song Elderberry Wine as the B-side of a 1972 single?

Elton John put Elderberry Wine on the flip side of Crocodile Rock, his first US number one, and recorded it for Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player.

Despite its name, the elderberry is botanically which type of fruit, the same kind as a cherry?

Drupe is the botanist's term: each glossy fruit is only 6 to 8 mm across, holds three to five seeds and hangs in drooping clusters in late autumn.

Which South Tyrol cocktail mixes elderflower liqueur with prosecco, sparkling water and mint leaves?

Hugo was devised in 2005 by bar manager Roland Gruber as an alternative to the Spritz Veneziano, and he picked the name at random after first choosing Otto.

Which soda brand sells an elderflower flavour named Shokata, after a traditional Romanian drink?

Fanta Shokata is based on socată, a Romanian folk drink made by fermenting elder blossoms with lemon and sugar; soc is the Romanian name for the elder.

A 100-gram serving of raw elderberries supplies about 40% of the daily value of which nutrient?

Vitamin C is the standout nutrient; the berries are 80% water and 18% carbohydrates, with a moderate amount of vitamin B6 and little else.

Which instruments did some Native American tribes make from blue elderberry wood, besides clappers?

Flutes and small whistles came from the easily hollowed stems, and the same soft wood served as a twirling stick for making fire by friction.

The Iroquois applied boiled elderberry inner bark to relieve which common ailment?

Toothache was treated by holding the bark to the sorer side of the face; the leaves and inner bark of the shrub also served as an insecticide and a dye.

Elderberry supplement marketing surged during which outbreak, despite a lack of clinical trials?

COVID-19 brought a rush of elderberry products, and the US Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to sellers who falsely claimed the supplements could treat disease.

Which fairy-tale author wrote The Elder-Tree Mother, in which an old man tells a sick boy a story?

Hans Christian Andersen later reworked the tale as a one-act piece for the stage, published in 1851.

In Germany and Scandinavia, elderberries are traditionally made into which dish, eaten as a meal?

Soup made from the berries is known in German as Fliederbeersuppe, and the fruit also goes into jam, chutney and a condiment called Pontack sauce.

A brown, gelatinous fungus that favours elder wood is named for its likeness to which body part?

Ear is the meaning of the Latin auricula in its scientific name, and the British Mycological Society recommends calling the fungus jelly ear.

Which French liqueur uses elderflowers from Savoie that pickers often deliver by bicycle?

St-Germain was created by distiller Robert Cooper after he tried an elderflower cocktail in a London bar in 2001, and each bottle carries the year its petals were picked.

In J. K. Rowling's novels, the Elder Wand has a core of tail hair from which magical creature?

Thestral tail hair sits inside the elder wood, and the wand's allegiance passes to whoever kills, defeats or disarms its owner.

Folklore in England and Scandinavia told woodcutters to do what before taking wood from an elder?

Ask its spirit's permission, or the Elder Mother who guards the tree would bring ill luck; in one tale she pinches a baby whose cradle was mended with her wood.

Folklore says dwarf elder grows only on battlefields of which people, who gave the plant a nickname?

Danes gave the plant the name danewort, and its stems and leaves turn red in autumn, which may explain the link with spilled blood.

Which pigments, also found in blueberries and red cabbage, give elderberries their dark colour?

Anthocyanins make the juice an intense blue-purple that turns reddish when diluted with water, and it is approved as a natural food colouring.

Hallands Fläder, an akvavit flavoured with elderflowers, comes from which Nordic country?

Sweden's south-west has a tradition of flavouring snaps with the blossoms, and Swedes also drink a diluted elderflower syrup called fläderblomsaft.

Which part of the elder is dipped into a light batter and fried to make fritters?

The flower heads are fried whole, and they are also steeped to make cordial, liqueurs and a mildly alcoholic sparkling drink nicknamed elderflower champagne.

Which acid is commonly added to elderflower cordial to help preserve it and sharpen the flavour?

Citric acid and lemon juice go into the sugar syrup with the steeped blossoms, and the finished cordial is usually diluted one part to ten of water.

A threatened longhorn beetle whose larvae live inside elderberry stems is native to which US state?

California's Central Valley, from Redding to Bakersfield, is the beetle's home range, and the adults emerge in spring just as the shrubs come into bloom.

Which craftsmen used the soft pith of elder stems to clean their tools before intricate work?

Watchmakers relied on the spongy pith, the same soft core that was pushed out of twigs to turn them into whistles and tapping spouts.

Which temperance-minded religious group in Pennsylvania held that elderberry wine was medicinal?

Quakers saw the wine as medicine; the cookbook writer Elizabeth Ellicott Lea spiced hers with ginger and cloves and gave it, sweetened and diluted, to sick children.

Followers of which modern pagan religion prize elderberry wine as a way into the fairy world?

Wicca's adherents value the dark wine, which is easily confused with elderflower wine, a pale drink made from the blossoms instead of the fruit.

Legend says a witch petrified a king and his knights as which stone circle, then became an elder tree?

The Rollright Stones lie on the border of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire; in the tale the king lost his chance to rule England when a hill hid Long Compton from view.

Elders belong to a small plant family alongside moschatel and which popular garden shrubs?

Viburnums give the family its accepted name, Viburnaceae, which holds just three genera and between 150 and 200 species.

Elderflower cordial premixed with sparkling water is sold under which French-derived name?

Pressé is close kin to citron pressé and lemonade, and like them it is used as a mixer in cocktails.

Elderberry leaves, each divided into five to seven leaflets, sit on the stem in which arrangement?

Opposite pairs of leaves, each 10 to 30 centimetres long with serrated leaflets, line the branches, and the young stems are hollow.

Elderberry wine was the most popular drink for which holiday in late-Victorian Surrey?

Christmas drinkers in Surrey took it warm, and earlier in the century London street vendors had sold hot elderberry wine to labourers.

Which German soft drink, fermented at a Bavarian brewery like beer, comes in an elderberry flavour?

Bionade was developed by master brewer Dieter Leipold, who spent eight years experimenting in a bathroom laboratory before it went on sale in 1995.

Until genetic studies moved them, elders sat in the plant family named after which fragrant climber?

Honeysuckle lent its name to the Caprifoliaceae, which once held the elders until morphological analysis and biochemical tests led botanists to a new placement.

Blue elderberries are really bluish-black underneath; what gives the fruit its pale blue look?

A powdery coating, which botanists call glaucous, covers the dark fruit and helps distinguish the species from other elderberries.