Respect thine elders

Spectator

7 hours ago

Before the arrival of strawberries, and not long after the coming of the swifts, the elder salutes the coming of summer after its own fashion: emerging from roadsides and hedgerows, gardens and wasteland, and scenting them with its blooms. Almost a century ago, Maud Grieve, in her 1931 Modern Herbal, said 'that our English summer is not here until the elder is fully in flower, and that it ends when the berries are ripe'.
At this time, when thorn blossom – which made our hedgerows look set for a wedding – has faded, the elder, like cow parsley, offers its own floral exuberance. Thrips, the insects which pollinate elders, are not themselves beautiful creatures, but seeing the blossoms of the elder, and smelling its fragrance, we experience something of the thrip's idea of worldly beauty.
Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, pointed out that we should not dismiss such styles of thought as anthropomorphism. They are – but they are also a form of argument by analogy. Other animals have appendages that we call legs because they are analogous to our legs; so too they have emotions and behaviours and desires and interests, and an apparent sense of what is beautiful and what is not, and therefore it is not silly, when we think of these things, to use the words we use for our own lives.
Most years there are articles about the elder when its flowers come into bloom. This allows us to notice that there is nothing about our appreciation of the world that need be original – indeed, that appreciation is more important than originality. The creamy white colour of the elderflower is neither as overlooked nor as remarkable as the golden-coloured eyes of the common toad, which Orwell described as being like a semi-precious stone called a chrysoberyl. Nor is its scent unusual – sweet, intoxicating, a little overpowering, like New Zealand sauvignon blanc with its notorious note of cat's urine. Nevertheless, the value of experience is not in it being unusual. Quite the opposite. Our joy in it being the start of summer, a sense that it will not be long before the flowers fade and the berries signal autumn, comes to us yearly. The elder has its seasons – and so do we.
The elder has a long-standing, and not always pleasant, place in our cultural history. Shakespeare mentioned the myth of Judas hanging himself on an elder tree. The mushrooms that grow on its bark were called Jew's ears, and although they are now called wood ear or jelly ear, the Linnean name, Auricularia auricula-judae, retains the old meaning. Pleasant that anti-Semitism has faded and there seems no need to erase its footprints when our modern usage has improved. Repainting words to make our history prettier is not generally helpful.
The mushrooms are edible, with a striking gelatinous texture, and a related species is much prized in China for that same quality. Elder, whose genus name is Sambucus, gave its name to the liqueur Sambuca, although the version drunk today – which can contain elderflower but relies for its flavour on anise – has little in common with the elderberry liqueur which first gave rise to the name.
That the flowers are edible is common knowledge, and elderflower cordial remains a popular drink. Elderflower champagne and elderflower fritters are easy enough to prepare. Few recipes mention that, to enjoy what thrips so love, you must be willing occasionally to enjoy a few thrips too. Removing most of them is easy; getting rid of them all is not.
In his famous article on the common toad, Orwell defended the habit of noticing the beauty of nature, even for those who felt life should otherwise be political. 'Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves?' I have noticed that articles in The Spectator which are not about politics are often attacked, in the online comments, as being fillers. My own suspicion is that the reverse is probably closer to the truth, and that when we look back on our lives we will find we have forgotten most of the current affairs that once seemed urgent – but not the waft of scented elderflower on lengthening evenings now May has slipped into June.