Hi, guys. Good morning. It it's been raining for three days. It's supposed to rain for three more. This morning was the first time I can get out and do this video. I was really bummed this year because I didn't think that we were going to be able to put in elderberries.
And I really had my heart set on making elderberry syrup for my family this fall for the immune properties and just all the vitamins that the plant carries. And I was so sad that we just couldn't swing it to put it in this year.
But my father in law was visiting earlier this week, and he found some already here on our property. So I'm so happy. I can't believe it. So I just kind of wanted to talk a little bit about identifying it because it can be kind of confused for some poisonous plants that you don't want to eat.
So let's talk about it. I'm going to go right over here to this little patch. Got this little patch of trees in front of our house. And here it is. So this is elderberry. These are going to become the berries.
If you can see that the flowers have already bloomed and fallen off. And this is blooms in progress. So if you can see the flower, it has five petals and they're very small, a quarter of an. Or smaller, and there's quite a few weeds that can be confused for them.
So I just wanted to talk about it. Another way of identifying them, both sides have the flowers having the five petals is that the leaves are going to be opposite each other. So some plants can have alternate leaves, so there would be a leaf and a leaf here, but elderberry has opposite leaves, so they're right across from each other, one terminal leaf.
And then there should be between five and seven leaves on the little branch that they're on. The leaves also are going to be oblong, kind of like an oval e shape. And they're going to have serrated edges, which you can see that over here a little bit better.
Another telltale sign is that your elderberry. Is actually a tree, so it is. Going to have woody growth. Your branches, the older branches are going to be woody as opposed to the green, which can get a little confusing because up by the actual flower, it's green.
But you can see back there, there are woody branches. I'm just so excited. Look at all these little berries forming. So my father in law actually found. Two patches on the property. We have one at the south of our property, and then we have one big giant patch at the north, kind of by the old corn crib.
It's behind the corn crib, so I never would have found it. So it's just super exciting. So we should have lots of elderberries that we can dry and then make some elderberry syrup in the fall. For some immune boosting properties.
Look at that sunrise. It is just gorgeous today. And the other neat thing is this elderberry patch is underneath a few mulberry trees. So we've got mulberries and elderberries here, and then I wanted to talk about plants that can be miss taken for.
So this is cow parsley, and you can see it has tiny white flowers, but the stem is not woody and it grows straight up from the ground. So the elderberry is going to be like a shrub tree, a tree that grows in like a shrub had it.
But the cow parsley, it's going to grow up just straight from the ground and it's never going to have a woody stem, but it is poisonous, so you don't want to confuse that for the elderberry. And we have some over on the other side of the path that you can really see.
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