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| 16 May 2007 09:18 |
| Obscure gardening question |
| Public |
| inquisitive |
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For much money, our gardener eradicated the bamboo beside the house, and promises that he'll keep killing it, repeatedly, until it's gone. (Except for the bamboo that spread under the fence to the neighbors, which will probably keep sending over shoots forever.)
This means that I finally have an area where it would be an acceptable idea to put my own undisciplined invasive plants *grin*. There's an area farther up the path -- this is the path on the south side of the house, between the master bedroom, the bathroom, and the fence -- that used to be full of ferns.
I want an elder so that I can make elderflower champagne and elderberry cordial. Most American and Canadian nurseries sell the North American native Sambucus canadensis. The European elder, the one English people make champagne and cordial from, is Sambucus nigra. Both have cultivars selected for fruit quality by commercial nurseries.
Has anybody out there eaten both? Are the flavors essentially the same, or should I shoot for the old European plant?
Edit. Hmm. A couple of pages say that taxonomists now suspect S. canadensis is a subspecies of S. nigra rather than a separate plant.
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I don't give either of them much space or much sun, and prune them hard every spring, and this has kept them both fairly small - about my own height and arm-span. I trim them roughly into the shape of trees with one central leader and a few widely-spaced branches. I have found the Korser takes to this shape a little more easily and naturally while the York is naturally shrubbier and has more shoots from the ground to snap off every spring, but other than that, they seem pretty much the same. I get slightly more berries from the Korser (which may just be because it likes my pruning better), but I can't really spot any difference between the berries in terms of appearance or flavour.
And people laughed at me for keeping the nursery tags on the elderberries so that I could remember which was which, but see, if I hadn't done so, I wouldn't be able to answer your question! Vindicated!
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