Elderberry Surprise

A (dramatic!!) story about a shrub + how to propagate elderberry from cuttings

When I first surveyed this backyard in New Orleans where I live some of the time, it was October of last year, and still very hot.

Here’s what it looked like

The air smelled like smoke because the nearby swamps were, um, on fire. There was a tub of Roundup in the shed and not a whole lot alive in the yard, aside from a voluptuous mass of plants that seemed to grow every time I blinked.

One, an insatiable purple vine that I now see everywhere, twirled its weird little fingers out into the air, threatening to choke anything nearby. Another, a cute native groundcover we dubbed “triangle head” (actually called drummond’s woodsorrel), had little purple flowers and bobbled in the wind, reminding me of these.

I also saw:

• One paper wasp (friendly, still a close friend)

• Mosquitos (everywhere)

• Brown anole lizards (invasive, due to cargo shipments and pet trade and potted plants, not really their fault)

• A shrieking crow

• A tiny elderberry shrub

The elderberry was growing by the back chain-link fence, definitely on accident (a “volunteer” is the polite horticultural term). People often think of elderberries (Sambucus canadensis) as weed-y because they’re fast-growing and spread aggressively. I think elderberries are great because they’re medicinal plants and birds love them.

So I weeded around it unnecessarily and watered it and watched it shoot up with weepy eyes. Another elderberry appeared next to it, fell over in a storm, then popped back up cartoonishly fast, growing vertically at a right angle from where it fell. 

It seemed like every alive thing in the yard, all three of them anyway, wanted a piece of the elderberry. I found leaf bites (“Evidence of herbivory!” I cried) and a cluster of yellow aphid eggs, and several giant fuzzy brown caterpillars. I couldn’t wait for it to start flowering.

One day, however, I came into the backyard and found my previously gigantic elderberry shrub torn to bits.

Sad

Yet life goes on

I wondered if a neighbor chopped them down, because they were leaning over the fence. I’ve never had a yard as an adult but one hears of these sorts of conflicts. I cut it all the way back, and sort of angrily took cuttings and plopped them in water as revenge.

“I will plant an elderberry forest,” I declared.

This was stupid because:

A) It was actually a storm that tore them down I think, in retrospect, or construction next door; either way sort of a one-time accident

B) It grew back freakishly fast

C) Perhaps cutting it back even improved overall prospects for that plant

D) More elderberries immediately popped up all over the yard

The joke was on me, for I had not understood the true habit of the chaotic and powerful elderberry. The shrubs grew bigger and bigger, and there were more and more and more of them, and I received my elderberry forest without planting a single cutting:

And eventually, in May, they flowered.

Wow

We put a waggly little brick border around some of them to really make a splash:

Not to brag

And here is the yard in May:

As mentioned, I did not use the elderberry cuttings that I took, and did not know who to give them to instead. So I just gently and apologetically placed them in a corner behind the shed, where they probably sprouted. But it was easy, if you want to know how to do this.

How to grow elderberry from cuttings

1. Honestly, I just read this blog on a website called “mommypotamus”

2. It worked!

Shortly after cutting

6 weeks later

3. I used “the water method” — cut 8-ish-inch woody canes, about the width of my finger. I read somewhere else to make sure they had a couple sets of leaf nodes on them.

4. I stuck them in water, changing the water every couple days when it got gross.

5. They eventually grew noodle-y looking white roots, at which point I think it would have been ok to plant them in the ground or in a pot.

Well, I hope this was useful for someone!