Written by She is not an impressive tree. She has none of the oak’s grandeur, none of the yew’s dark magnificence. She is scrubby, quick-growing, almost weedy, her stems pithy and hollow, her bark corky and rough. She appears at the edges of gardens, in the gaps between buildings, along the margins of paths that no one maintains. She establishes herself in rubble, in neglected corners, in the places where the ground has been disturbed and no one has bothered to plant anything else. She seems, at first encounter, to be exactly the kind of plant you step around on your way to something more significant.
This has been her disguise for a very long time.
Sambucus nigra, the elder tree, is one of the oldest and most deeply embedded magical plants in the European tradition. She has been the companion of witches, healers, midwives, and cunning folk since before recorded history. She has been called the Elder Mother, the Queen of the Herbs, the Witch Tree. She has been credited with powers of protection and harm in equal measure. She has been used in medicine, in magic, in dye-making, in wine-making, in folk ritual, and in the kind of quiet, informal hedgerow witchcraft that never called itself anything at all.