HISTORICAL
E
very year when the red elderberries (Sambucus racemosa) ripen, I marvel at their beauty
and quantity. Clusters of bright red fruit cascade from black stems and dark green foliage with
branch bending abundance. Resembling a northern version of Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), they
seem better suited to ripening during Christmastime
than the heat of the summer, yet ripen they do by
the first hot days of summer.
It is hard to ignore a wild edible that grows as commonly as red elderberry, but most wild food books caution against eating the berries, despite traditional use by
nearly all the First Nations groups in the Pacific Northwest. On several occasions I have cooked and sampled
the fruit, but until recently, my enthusiasm never lasted
beyond a tentative taste of the cooked fruit. This year,
however, I resolved to carry my experiments through
to completion, and what follows is my first serious
attempts to try and crack the palatability secretes of
red elderberry. But first, a little backgr