Here's today's Elder flowers harvest. I always let freshly harvest Elder flowers sit for an hour or two before processing them because there's such an active ecosystem of tiny, tiny critters n them that I like to give it a chance to escape.
This lot is for drying (which won't take long in this weather) and I've reduced the length of the branches so that the next lot of flowers will become berries.
Our tree produces new growth prolifically for most of the year but it gets so very tall that I need to keep reducing the height so we don't lose flowers and berries as the branches whip around in the wind. It's a pain to climb a ladder at my age too. We do let it get tall in early Summer to shade a lot of the garden. I cut it down to 1 metre tall in Winter but it grows an easy 5 metres by this time of year. The pic of the tree is taken from the road, the angle will tell you how tall it is.
Elder Flower is an amazing remedy for colds and flus and the berries are great for viral infections. The bark is a laxative and crushed leaves get used for minor external wounds. Who could ask for a better herbal companion?
The flowers are an interesting drying herb that works in two ways to eliminate water from the body. Drunk as a hot tea, they are diaphoretic (make you sweat), the same tea, allowed to cool and drunk cold Is a diuretic (makes you wee).
There's probably a term for a herb that does its job in 2 ways, does anyone know what it is? Athena probably knows.
Some of you may have seen that I've been writing a series of posts about making herbal remedies at home. I want to share what I know of this topic so that, as the world gets crazier, folks will have other avenues of medical care, namely those of themselves and their community. If you look back over this blog, you can see heaps of info on the topic, plus loads and loads of posts on herbs and using Australian bushfoods from a white perspective. If you haven't been around on in the @hivegarden and @naturalmedicine communities for long, you may be interested in looking back. There's w-a-a-a-a-y too much there for me to repost and the Hive system doesn't let you vote on old posts so, if you're happy with what you find, I believe that there is now a tip option...
