From early spring to late summer Blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, Elder, Sambucus nigra, and Bramble, Rubus fruticosus, succeed each other in streaking our hedgerows white – and, in more or less reverse order, have their fruits consumed by birds (Snow & Snow 1988). Like the others, Elder has been a notable part of the British landscape in other ways, too. It was, for example, mentioned as a boundary feature in Anglo-Saxon charters (Rackham 1986), and its uses and folklore have been so legion that its entry in Mrs Grieve’s famous A Modern Herbal (first published in 1931; see Grieve 1980) exceeds that of any other species.