Doubtless this is what most attracts the flies and beetles, while the lesser bees, that frequent them also, are more strongly appealed to through the eye.No nectar rewards visitors, consequently butterflies rarely stop on the flat clusters; but there is an abundant lunch of pollen for such as like it.Each minute floret has its five anthers so widely spread away from the stigmas that self-pollination is impossible; but with the help of small, winged pollen carriers plenty of cross-fertilized fruit forms.With the help of migrating birds, the minute nutlets within the "berries" are distributed far and wide.
When clusters of dark, juicy fruit make the bush top-heavy, it is, of course, no part of their plan to be gathered into pails, crushed and boiled and fermented into the spicy elderberry wine that is still as regularly made in some old-fashioned kitchens as currant jelly and pickled peaches.Both flowers and fruit have strong medicinal properties.Snuffling children are not loath to swallow sugar pills moistened with the homeopathic tincture of Sambucus.The common European species (S.nigra), a mystic plant, was once employed to cure every ill that flesh is heir to; not only that, but, when used as a switch, it was believed to check a lad's growth.Very likely! Every whittling schoolboy knows how easy it is to remove the white pith from an elder stem.An ancient musical instrument, the sambuca, was doubtless made from many such hollow reed-like sticks properly attuned.
A more woody species than the common elder, whose stems are so green it is scarcely like a true shrub, is the very beautiful RED-BERRIED or MOUNTAIN ELDER (S.pubens), found in rocky places, especially in uplands and high altitudes, from the British Possessions north of us to Georgia on the Atlantic Coast, and to California on the Pacific.Coming into bloom in April or May, it produces numerous flower clusters which are longer than broad, pyramidal rather than flat-topped.They turn brown when drying.
In young twigs the pith is reddish-brown, not white as in the common elder.Birds with increased families to feed in June are naturally attracted by the bright red fruit; and while they may not distribute the stones over so vast an area as autumn migrants do those of the fall berries, they nevertheless have enabled the shrub to travel across our continent.
HOBBLE-BUSH; AMERICAN WAYFARING TREE
(Viburnum alnifolium; V.lantanoides of Gray) Honeysuckle family Flowers - In loose, compound, flat, terminal clusters, 3 to 5 in.
across; the outer, showy, white flowers each about 1 in.across, neutral; inner ones very much smaller, perfect.Calyx 5-parted;corolla 5-lobed; 5 stamens; 3 stigmas.Stem: A widely and irregularly branching shrub, sometimes 10 ft.high; the young twigs rusty scurfy.Leaves: Opposite, rounded or broadly ovate, pointed at the tip, finely saw-edged, unevenly divided by midrib, scurfy on veins beneath.Fruit: Not edible, berry-like, at first coral-red, afterward darker.
Preferred Habitat - Cool, low, moist woods.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - North Carolina and Michigan, far northward.
Widespread, irregular clusters of white bloom, that suggest heads of hydrangea whose plan has somehow miscarried, form a very decorative feature of the woods in May, when the shrubbery in Nature's garden, as in men's, is in its glory.For what reason are there two sizes and kinds of flowers in each cluster? Around the outer margin are large showy shams: they lack the essential organs, the stamens and pistil; therefore what use are they?
Undoubtedly they are mere advertisements to catch the eye of passing insects - no small service, however.It is the inconspicuous little flowers grouped within their circle that attend to the serious business of life.The shrub found it good economy to increase the size of the outer row of flowers, even at the expense of their reproductive organs, simply to add to the conspicuousness of the clusters, when so many blossoms enter into fierce competition with them for insect trade.Many beetles, attracted by the white color, come to feed on pollen, and often destroy the anthers in their greed.But the lesser bees (Andrena chiefly), and more flies, whose short tongues easily obtain the accessible nectar, render constant service.These welcome guests we have to thank for the clusters of coral-red berries that make the shrub even more beautiful in September than in May.
Because it sometimes sends its straggling branches downward in loops that touch the ground and trip up the unwary pedestrian, who presumably hobbles off in pain, the bush received a name with which the stumbler will be the last to find fault.From the bark of the Wayfaring Tree of the Old World (V.lantana), the tips of whose procumbent branches often take root as they lie on the ground, is obtained bird-lime.No warm, sticky scales enclose the buds of our hardy hobble-bush; the only protection for its tender baby foliage is in the scurfy coat on its twigs; yet with this thin covering, or without it, the young leaves safely withstand the intense cold of northern winters.