Red Elderberry is a common native shrub of the Minnesota woods, growing on twiggy branching stems 6 to 12 feet high in our area. Young bark is reddish-gray to greenish-gray with raised lenticels and frequently hairy. Older stems are mostly gray with some red showing through and the lenticles take on a warty appearance. The pith is spongy. Dead branch stubs are frequently present.

The leaves are opposite and form very early in Spring, with 5 to 7 lance-shaped leaflets making up the pinnately compound leaf. Margins of the leaflets are serrate, the tips are pointed and the base is often unequal. The upper side is dark green, the underside paler and usually with fine hair and longer hair on the veins. Leaf stalks and central rachis of the leaf are usually reddish-brown. The buds are pinkish before opening.

The inflorescence is an upright domed (or pyramidal shaped) compact cluster of stalked flowers, appearing at the ends of the twigs of the prior year's growth.

Flowers: The small whitish flowers are fragrant and perfect. The calyx is very small with 5 pointed lobes. The corolla is formed of 5 white spreading to recurved petals which are usually fully recurved when the flower is receptive to pollination. The five stamens spread outward, have white filaments and yellow anthers. In the center is the greenish ovary with the stigma of the style 3-lobed. The flower buds are also pinkish before opening.

Fruit: Fertile flowers mature quite early into small red berry-like drupes which are acidic, but well liked by the birds. Each drupe usually contains 3 seeds. The seeds are conical shaped with one side flat. The drupes are unpalatable to humans until they are cooked and even then most people will still find them too bitter. Even in small quantities they may cause intestinal upsets.

Habitat: Red Elderberry grows best in sunny moist locations. It adapts to partial shade, but full shade will result in a leggy plant that flowers poorly. S. racemosa is found in many places in the Woodland Garden and more shady spots of the Upland Garden.

Names: In the never ending quest for specificity, botanists have recently moved the Sambucus genus into the Adoxaceae plant family, which is a small group of 5 genera of shrubs that have opposite leaves, mostly 5-petaled flowers that produce a small drupe - such as the Viburnums. Minnesota authorities have made this change, USDA has not yet. The genus name, Sambucus, refers to a Greek musical instrument, the sambuke, made from elderwood as the stems can be easily hollowed out to make flutes and other instruments. The elder Pliny makes reference to this. The species racemosa, means 'having a raceme' although the flower cluster with several branches is more like a cyme.

The author name for the plant description from 1753 - 'L.' is for Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist and the developer of the binomial nomenclature of modern taxonomy. An older classification for this plant used by Linnaeus was Sambucus pubens L. As noted above, some authorities do not yet agree with the reclassification of the elderberries by Richard Bolli in 1994 and have left the plant in its old family - the Honeysuckle (Caprifoliaceae).

Comparisons: The berries of Red Elderberry are already red before the larger Canada Elderberry, S. nigra, begins blooming. These two species of Sambucus are the only ones found native in Minnesota.