The Miracle of Elderflowers! A Wildflower That Heals Us & Tastes Amazing! 🌸

Hello my friends and welcome back to our channel. Home is where our heart is. My name is Dane, author of the series of books Knowledge to Forage. I hope you're having a beautiful day wherever you are in the world and thank you all for joining me here today on this glorious summer's morning where I'm absolutely blessed to be spending my time out frolicking through a woodland, basking in the sights, sounds and scents of the elderflowers. Ah, they say once you can smell the elderflowers on the breeze it's officially a summer's day and it's like these flowers just bloom in celebration of summer, isn't it? You just can't help but have a big smile brung to your face when you see an elder tree in full bloom with the bright blue sky behind it. Elderflowers let us know that the long cold days of winter are officially behind us and now only brighter days lay ahead. What a glorious scent it's filling this woodland air because the sun is just rising here behind me and its heat is beginning to blaze down upon the elderflowers. They're all beginning to release their unique perfume and this elderflower perfume is mixing with the warm musk of the woodland creating a beautifully unique scent. This woodland we're wandering through here is absolutely full to the brim with elders. Let's go say hello to this little baby elder tree here. We might have to get stung a bit but a little bit of pain never hurt anyone, right? Now what's most excellent about elders is they're wild. They'll grow pretty much anywhere. As soon as they find a little bit of space and light they'll quickly burst from the earth, bloom and blossom with these glorious flowers and you'll find elderflowers growing pretty much all around the world. You'll find elder growing throughout Europe, Asia, America, Australia, New Zealand and many more countries. This time of year in summertime it will be hard to go out and not see an elderflower in full bloom. These trees are hardy trees and they just thrive wherever they can. Now because elder trees grow across many countries you may know them by different names. Some know this tree as an elderflower tree of course because of its beautiful elderflower blooms. Some know it as an elderberry tree because these blooms are later transformed into berries but if you was to ask the elder tree what its name is it would simply reply I am the elder because these are just the gifts of the tree sometimes attached to its name. Now elder trees are very unique looking trees and I mean that in a nice way elder. These trees don't have dark bark it's actually a pale creamy colour and these trees grow rapidly. This tree here is probably only a year old. Within just a few years an elder tree can burst and grow all the way up to over 10 feet tall but this rapid growth comes at a cost because it makes its bark, its branches fragile and they can be easily snapped with just a little tug. This is why the elder tree's bark as it matures is soft and squishy like cork. Elderflowers truly are the scent of summer. Now it's because of the elder's fragile squishy branches that I can't help but wonder if this is connected to the folklore of the tree for you see long throughout history it was said that you should never damage an elder tree because it was said that the tree every single elder tree was possessed of a spirit of a witch and if you damaged a tree it was believed that you would receive bad fortune. Now would this bad fortune be in the form of mischievous magic or would it be perhaps in the form of a broken arm when you tried to climb the tree? I'll let you decide. Now to learn how to identify elder trees is super simple. Here we have a common elder it's latin name sambuca sambucus nigra. Say it with me sambucus nigra and sambucus loosely translates to flute because these branches when you snap them in half you see a big soft pith which is easily pushed out and you can make things like flutes and the elderflowers themselves grow together in clusters what's known as an umbel and this umbel simply means grows in the shape of an umbrella and when we look closely at the flowers themselves we can see that there's actually hundreds of tiny little flowers that make up the elderflower each one a creamy pale yellow colour with five petals and of course when you smell them they have the unique scent of the elderflower. An elder tree leaves a dark green and lance shape and when you look closely at the edges you can see they have little jagged sides. Now once you've made good friends with the elder tree you can then welcome the joys of the elderflowers into your life. These flowers have been used for wild food for centuries for their floral flavours and you can make many fantastic recipes. You can make elderflower tea, elderflower champagne, of course an elderflower cordial, elderflower syrup, elderflower kombucha and even elderflower Turkish delight. Now when out foraging for elderflowers there's a few harvest tips I have for you. Firstly we want to collect elderflowers after they've been in the sunshine on a dry warm summer's day because this boosts their perfumes and flavours and secondly we're not just going to pluck all the elderflowers off willy-nilly with elderflowers we need to be a lot more gentle. We can snip them off at their stem and gently place them in a basket. We do this because you see when I tap this flower here it covers my hand in a fine creamy pollen you could say fairy dust. Now this pollen contains a fair amount of the elderflower's aroma. It's the flowers, the petals, the pollen and the oils of the elderflower which create a unique scent of summer itself. And elderflowers don't just have a fantastic floral flavour they're also medicinal too. Elderflowers have been used for centuries in traditional herbalism they're considered a cooling flower and when you feel its stem right here you can feel that it's cool giving an indication of its health benefits. You see the elderflower is a cooling flower which means when have something hot a hot ailment such as a fever or flu we can drink elderflower tea to help cool us down. Elderflowers can do this because they promote perspiration they're diaphoretic this means it helps us to sweat pushing out all the toxins and illness pushing out the heat within us helping us to get better. These flowers are also an anti-allergy you can use them to treat seasonal allergies. If you sneeze at certain times of the year like me you can drink an elderflower cup of tea and it's a powerful antihistamine. This means it can help the dry up the mucus the congestion it reduces the inflammation and then cooling properties also flow all throughout our body helping to relax our sinuses and cool down our hot puffy faces. It's remarkable isn't it how everything we need blooms exactly when we need it for both our health and nature's harmony. The cleavers springs in late winter to cleanse our body of the toxins built up by them dark grey days followed by the nettles them dark green nettles rich in iron which are great for our health and wildlife followed then by of course the elderflowers the elegant elderflowers providing us with shade and cooling remedies for them hot summer days to look upon such order such balance such harmony such grace and see it all as a cosmic mistake as if chaos fell down into perfect harmony well that sure does take a lot of faith what do you see when you gaze upon the glory of the natural world a meaningless mistake or wisdom and grace how's that for a beautiful view we've come from all the way down there to all the way up here and now the sunshine has been blazing down upon the wildflowers the elderflowers for a good few hours so i'm gonna go forage some and fill up a basket and then we can take them home to my beautiful wife stellie where she's going to show us how to welcome all the joys of the flavors and health benefits of the elderflowers into our life and we're home with stilly hi guys welcome back to the kitchen this is an exciting day because it's elderflower season elderflowers only last for a very short time but they're one of my favorite flowers so today i'm going to show you how we're going to preserve the wonderful elderflower in all its glory so we can use it all through the year we're also going to have a look at elderflower tea and the delicious elderflower cordial come with me i'll show you how to do it to dry your lovely elderflowers we need a tin like this nice and clean nice and large with some scissors and our wonderful elderflowers now i've been and picked these on actually the hottest day of the year so it is quite important that you pick them um on a hot dry day because as you will see as i chop these there's lots of pollen falling off and when they're really dry it's all that pollen and all the lovely flowers that holds the elderflower flavor so the drier your flowers to begin with on a hot day pick them on a hot sunny day better right so when you're chopping the flowers off we want to try and get as little of this green stem as possible the flowers only but don't worry about it too much if you do get a bit of stem it's not the end of the world we'll just be mindful not to put too much in because it's quite bitter the stem we want the lovely light floral elderflower flavor coming through we're just going to put these in a nice cool not direct sunlight place somewhere that where they can dry and every day we're just going to give them a little mix up just rustle them around a bit and take about a week to dry and then we'll have elderflowers all through the season smells amazing if only we had smell-o-vision cheers cheers look at that that color is incredible refreshing that's one of the best herbal teas it actually is money can't buy yeah very good you know sometimes with a herbal tea especially metal tea it can taste quite earthy and have that kind of almost muddy flavor elderflower is one of those ones that just tastes like summer it's brilliant yeah whenever i want to impress anyone when i'm out i'm making them an elderflower tea when we're out and they're like oh wow this is actually really nice yeah it's a really good one what color would you say that is like a very light refreshing green refreshing green it tastes like summer i think i've got pollen on my nose you do that's our tradition there we go yeah and if you get seasonal allergies like me this is good for that yes it's very good yeah yeah so that antihistamine actually blocks histamine which is a pesky histamine it's what flares up and makes me sneeze and uh i'm not going to start sneezing until mid-summer though when that grass pollen comes out to get me so i've got to preserve it yeah for them yeah and have a nice cup of dried elderflower tea yeah in a few months time to help me stop now it is a hot summer's day and the elderflower tea is delicious but i also want to make some elderflower cordial of course our good friend's birthday this week yeah and i'm going to make them some elderflower cordial to make a lovely gift yes and that's why people traditionally drunk elderflower cordial because it cools you down and not everyone wants a hot cup of tea mid-summer so a cordial is the next best thing okay let's get into it let's make an elderflower cordial from our book knowledge to forage here we are for this recipe our elderflower cordial we're just going to need some elderflowers and half a cup of honey and some water so let's get straight into it we are going to do what we did a minute ago snip off our beautiful fragrant elderflowers into the pan in they go you can also make this cordial with dried flowers that's 30 umbels of elderflowers in there or a potful and now i'm going to add four cups of water just cold water make sure your flowers are all nicely covered add half a cup of honey mix it all in now it would be at this stage that if you wanted to make cordial to last for a month or so in the fridge that you would add in some sliced lemon but i know this cordial is going to be drunk very quickly as in today so we're not going to bother with the lemon we're going to pop it on a medium heat and very gently simmer for 30 minutes here we are our cordial has been simmering for about 30 minutes and now we're going to strain all the lovely liquid through the sieve pour your elderflower cordial into the bottle and there we have it a lovely bottle of fresh elderflower cordial let it cool down pop it in the fridge enjoy a refreshing floral treat delicious so you use it a bit like juice don't drink it straight out the bottle all of that like that we'll be adding a little bit to a glass and then you can add water or sparkling water or apple juice and sparkling water that's a special one there's loads of different ways that you can enjoy the elderflower cordial yes but we are going to enjoy this yes as time has gone on we must go to the allotment and water it it's not a day of the year so i think the plant needs a good soaking they'll need a drink and so will we so come with us yeah and we'll enjoy the cordial together there welcome to our allotment how exciting guys we've finally got very very exciting so we've only had this place for about six weeks and we've got some mint we've got some dill and some borage and we've got some lemon balm this is going to be a little herd bed very exciting and we've got a lovely hawthorn and ivy for our washing for our soap check out the apple tree over here lots of lovely little apples all over it maddie's bed this is onions and potatoes maddie built the whole bed herself and she's really excited about it and then here's our potato patch and we've got some onions and it's all growing and it's so exciting it's just great to have a space to be creative and yeah it's exciting stuff um this is a rocket stove that we had a go at making and we cooked some noodles on the other day so the idea is that you put a little fire in the middle underneath the bricks and then the heat draws up and it gets really hot really quickly without using too much fuel it works really well quite proud of that one and then down here we've got some gooseberry bushes so quite a lot of the allotments on this site have been emptied whilst we have been moving in which is very lucky for us because it means that we salvage some lovely gooseberries and some blueberries check these out planted these in and they've got berries on and they're really big the lovely lady called june who said that we could have them and here they are on our flock i hope they live this space over here who knows we're hoping to get loads of things growing in it next year and um yeah it's just a it's a creative outdoor space that we have finally it's very exciting here we are look i was only in the woods this morning 4am 4am and now we're here at dusk dusk dawn the most glorious parts of the day the coolest parts of the day on the hottest day of the year oh it was very hot and now we're the weather is cooling and we're gonna try the elderflower cordial did it work a cooling cordial of course it worked lovely jubbly lovely jubbly okay and then magic fizzy juice that doesn't look majestic in its big plastic bottle oh yeah exciting it's that time of year again we've got through the winter we've got through the cold months yet we've survived again another winter and we've managed to do i think six summers now we've made elderflower cordial six years in a row amazing haven't we done well ah that's the taste of summer oh summer delicious the sun is setting if you make one if you make one thing yeah make some elderflower cordial this year because it really is so delicious yeah you don't need to do a thing other than make elderflower cordial you know normally say above all else at the end of the videos above all else but that you must do that yeah and they're fleeting so get out there find yourself in nature find some flowers on the trees some elderflowers and um have a go making yourself some elderflower cordial then go back out into nature and enjoy it outside and listen to the birds yes you've got to drink it outside when dusk is cooling after a hot day is there anything more pleasant not really not really because it's close to evening yeah delicious anyway we're gonna enjoy this yeah as always it's been a pleasure don't forget to like comment subscribe ring the bell press the new hype button and that does magical things for our channel and uh you want to own all this knowledge and book form check out our awesome series of books knowledge to forage but above all of that make some elderflower cordial