Why Elderflower Is Worth the Walk

Elderflower season is short. In most of the UK you have roughly late May to mid-June, sometimes stretching into early July in the north, and only about three weeks of proper flowering before the creamy heads begin to yellow, curl and drop. What you get for paying attention is one of the finest flavours the hedgerow offers: a cordial that tastes of early summer, and fritters that turn a simple batter into something worth inviting people round for. Miss the window and you will be waiting another year.

The catch is that elderflower is easy to pick badly. A glance at a froth of white blossom is not identification, and a busy roadside verge is not a larder. A little care, both in what you pick and where you pick it, is the difference between a delicate, fragrant brew and a sad, dusty disappointment.

Getting Your Eye In: Bush, Leaf and Flower

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is a shrub or small tree, usually two to five metres, often multi-stemmed and sprawling rather than tidy. You will find it in hedgerows, along woodland edges, in churchyards, on waste ground and at the back of mature gardens. It is remarkably tolerant of rough treatment, which is why it turns up in the scruffy corners of the countryside.

Start with the wood. Older bark is grey-brown, deeply fissured and corky, with a knobbly, ancient look to it. Young twigs are green and bendy, sometimes flushed with purple-red. Snap one and you will find it hollow, with a soft white pith down the middle — a very reliable clue.

The leaves are opposite and pinnate, usually five to seven oval leaflets with finely serrated edges, each five to ten centimetres long. Crush one and you get a green, slightly musty, faintly unpleasant smell. The flowers, though, are the point: tiny five-petalled florets, each only a few millimetres across, packed into flat-topped heads roughly ten to twenty centimetres wide. Look for that creamy, off-white colour and the way the heads sit up above the leaves, facing the sun.

Lookalikes Worth Knowing

Several plants produce white froth on a shrub or tree in early summer, so check before you snip.

• Rowan (mountain ash): creamy flat clusters in May to June, but a tree with many small, sharply serrated leaflets. The flowers smell far less sweet — sometimes slightly sour — and later come the orange-red berries.
• Guelder rose: white lace-cap heads with a ring of much larger outer florets around a tight centre, on a shrub with opposite, three-lobed leaves.
• Dwarf elder: a herbaceous plant that dies back each winter, growing on rough ground. It smells distinctly rank and unpleasant, and carries black berries. Leave it alone.
• Umbellifers (hogweed, cow parsley): flat white flower heads, but soft green stems, not a woody pruned bush, and no hint of elder's sweet muscat scent.

If it smells sweet and floral, has hollow pithy twigs, pinnate leaves and creamy heads held up to the light, you are on the right plant. If it smells rank or catty, walk on.

When and Where to Pick

Go on a sunny morning once the dew has dried, ideally before the heat of midday. The fragrance oils are strongest then, and the heads are dry, so they will not go slimy in your bag. A head picked in the cool of evening or after rain is a pale imitation of the same head taken at ten in the morning.

Where you pick matters as much as when. Avoid dusty roadside bushes, lay-bys and busy verges: grit, exhaust residue and herbicide drift all end up in the flowers, and no amount of straining will remove it. The same goes for field margins next to sprayed crops, railway embankments and hedges at dog height along popular footpaths. Instead, look for quiet field edges, garden shrubs, allotment boundaries, woodland paths and hedgerows well away from traffic.

Picking Kindly and Leaving Plenty Behind

Take no more than a third of the heads from any one bush, and never strip a branch clean. Those flowers become elderberries in autumn — food for blackbirds and thrushes, and the makings of wine, ketchup and cordial for you. Leave the rest to fulfil their purpose.

Cut with scissors or secateurs just below the head, leaving a short stalk to hold, and drop the heads into a basket or paper bag; plastic bags make them sweat and brown. Shake each head gently over the bush before it goes in — beetles, spiders and ladybirds live in there and are better off where they belong. Handle them lightly, keep them cool, and use them the same day or freeze them in bags for winter.

From Basket to Bowl: Cordial and Fritters

For cordial, allow about twenty good heads to 1.5 litres of water. Pour boiling water over the flowers with the zest and juice of two lemons, cover and leave for twenty-four hours. Strain, then warm gently with a kilogram of sugar and a teaspoon of citric acid per litre until dissolved. Bottle, keep in the fridge, and freeze spare bottles.

For fritters, choose heads whose buds are just opening — they hold batter better than fully open ones. Make a batter from 100g plain flour, a pinch of salt, one egg and around 150ml of milk or beer. Holding the stalk as a handle, dip each head, fry in oil at 180°C for a minute or two until golden, drain and dust with caster sugar. Eat them warm, with lemon, standing in the garden. Do not wash the heads; a gentle shake is all they need, and the perfume is the whole point.