The Los Angeles River near the Narrows is lined with wild
elderberry trees. Though the sides of the river are buttressed with concrete,
the bottom remains original riverbed. Natural springs bubbling up from beneath
make the laying of concrete impossible. The middle of the river is slung with
long, narrow islands pinned in place with tall trees and dense bushes. People live on these islands, by necessity or
by design, at least until the winter storms and floods sweep away their
encampments, and them, if they do not temporarily relocate themselves.
Once I saw a couple walking two large dogs and a goat on the
edge of the river bottom. Three tails wagged as the animals searched for
movement in the green. Goats are not allowed in Los Angeles, nor are the
roosters that run in a panic ahead of you on some city streets, nor is corn,
growing up as enthusiastic as cheerleaders through cracks in the sidewalk. I
love these things because they remind me that there is another world running parallel,
and sometimes just beneath, the efforts of the City fathers to torture a river
into compliance, to tame a street or a people with artificial and sterile, nearly
penal, landscaping, hoping that this contrived green and defeated nature will
shame us into being orderly, or into staying inside altogether.
It’s the wild in Los Angeles that intrigues me, and those of
us who have found little pockets of it cherish it and share it only with our
dearest friends. So it is with the elderberries that call at various times
throughout the year. In the spring billows of creamy white blossoms,
plate-sized umbels, bob heavy in the warming breeze. Who can resist burying
their face in this pillow of tiny flowers, slightly licorice-scented, to
breathe deeply and arise covered in pollen, like a child discovered by his
mother’s face powder?
I take an umbel of flowers here and there, never many, as
others know this spot and we need to leave enough to turn to berries in the
fall, and enough for the birds who love them as much as we do. I lightly rinse the
flowers, detach them from their stems, and add them to cakes and breads. Or I
dry them for medicine. The flowers are dusted with their own natural yeast. Peasants
used to make a light champagne with only elder flowers and water, and just
before bottling they added a little sugar to make bubbles.[1]
It was with great joy that I found elderberries thriving in
the Mojave, which I thought too harsh an environment for this tender green.
Wild elderberry trees line the hills along Interstate 60 before it merges with
the 10. It’s as if they are there to welcome you, to tell you that you are
almost home. I planted an elderberry tree on the land out by the military base
north of Joshua Tree, on the island on which we live, and it has suffered from
the heat and cold and the ripping wind but it has endured. It wants to live
there.
The Malki Museum, on the Morongo Indian reservation, has an
old elderberry tree in its interpretive garden. They call the elderberry “hunqwuat.”
When the elderberry shoots are three or four years old, native Cahilla and
Kumeyaay men gathered them to make flutes and clapper sticks. Young women made
dye from the berries to color the baskets they would weave. [2]
The people also used the blossoms and the berries to treat colds and flus.[3]
In the fall, when the berries have turned dark and will no
longer make you sick if you eat them, you may gather them as you would any
sweet berry and make pies and pastries, or juice, or dry them for later.
Elderberries mature in the fall, in time for us to take
advantage of their antiviral qualities.[4]
There are scores of recipes for homemade elderberry syrups and liquors and it
is a good habit to make use of these as the days shorten. I encourage you to
experiment. I prefer a tart flavor and find the sweetness of the elderberry
cloying, so I make oxymels with vinegar and honey; or elixirs, alcoholic
tinctures sweetened to go down a little easier.
Europeans and early American colonists made sweet syrups out
of elderberries. My favorite herbalists encourage people to incorporate herbs
into their daily lives in ordinary ways, not as mysterious and arcane medicines,
but as simply as pancake syrup, or a flavoring for homemade sodas. This is as
it should be. Herbs want to be common. They want to live in our kitchens.
There is an abiding and wild world that calls to us and it
is lined with elderberry, horehound, epazote, lamb’s quarter, and wild tobacco,
unruly plants all, busting through the city sidewalks, as well as the desert
floor. Life cannot be tamed, and it will come up again through any crack in the
concrete, and if there is no crack, it will make a crack. It will rewild. For
me, it’s not the making of medicine or the practice of herbalism that heals,
it’s the joy in making friends with plants, the joy of bubbling up
unrestrained, part and parcel with nature. The plant friends we make, the seeds
we collect, the shoots we plant on our desert islands, the herbs we hang and
dry, the potions we make and share, remind us that we too, were native and wild
somewhere once.
[1] Sacred
and Herbal Healing Beers | The Secret of Ancient Fermentation, Stephen Harrod
Buhner
[2] Tending
the Willd, Native Am Knowledge and the Management of Cal's Natural Resources,
M. Kat Anderson
[3] Medicinal
Plants Used by Native American Tribes In Southern California, Donna Largo,
Daniel F. McCarthy, and Marcia Roper
[4] Randomized
study of the efficacy and safety of oral elderberry extract in the treatment of
influenza A and B virus infections, US National Library of Medicine, National
Institutes of Health. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15080016
