Red Elderberry

Size, growth and what to expect

Root sprouts of red elderberry can put on 10 to 15 feet in their first year. Seedlings are slower but still fast, and our growth estimator models them at nearly three feet a year on an average site. It makes a sprawling, suckering shrub of 8 to 12 feet and spreads 8 to 15 feet.

Those sprouts may flower in their second year. The white flowers open in May and June as the leaves unfold, in dome-shaped clusters. The fruit follows in upright clusters of dark red drupes with 2 to 4 seeds apiece, ripe from late June into August. It usually sets a good crop every year. More than 50 kinds of songbird eat the fruit, along with bears and rodents, and browsing animals eat the foliage, which is bitter and contains cyanide. Unripe fruit can cause vomiting in people.

It grows wild from Alaska across Canada and south through the eastern states to Missouri and Georgia, in moist woods, thickets, stream banks and fence rows.

How to grow Red Elderberry

Red elderberry belongs in cool country and sulks in hot lowland summers. It takes full sun to deep shade and any ordinary soil that drains, rocky slopes included. Stems arch wide, so set a screen row 6 feet apart and keep single plants that far from walls.

Plant a dormant bare-root or potted sapling between leaf drop and bud break. Dig wide and shallow, keep the crown at the soil line, refill with the soil you dug and nothing else, and mulch a ring that stops short of the stems. A shrub needs no stake. Clean the seed from the pulp and sow it outdoors at once, a quarter inch deep. It needs the summer warmth and then the winter cold. Most comes up the next spring and some a year later.

Water weekly through the first summer when rain fails. Rabbits and deer nip soft young shoots, so cage the plant for two winters. Elder wood is pithy and canes age out fast, so once established cut a few of the oldest to the ground each year after fruiting. It flowers on last year's wood, so late-winter pruning costs bloom.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. Red elderberry sets little or no fruit with its own pollen, so plant two or more seedlings from different parents. Bees and flies carry the pollen between shrubs. The berries ripen in June and vanish to birds within days. Raw fruit, leaves and stems are toxic, and this is not the elder people grow for jelly. Single canes are short-lived, but the clump renews itself from suckers.