a history of elderberries.com

Welcome to elderberries.com, a site about everything elderberry! This version of the site is new as of 2009, but I’ve had the domain since 2000, after inspiration struck during the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the form of the line, “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!” The name elderberries.com was a perfect fit: geeky Monty Python, but cheerful and fun too.

The site spent about 6 years as a personal blog, but somewhere around the third year, I discovered the majority of my traffic came from people looking for info on elderberries. And... while I’m sure the photos of my son covered in pureed sweet potatoes were fascinating, it wasn't exactly what they were looking for. So after some research, I added some basic elderberry info and recipes, and it developed a small following among elderberry enthusiasts.

The site came down for a time in 2005, but in 2007, I decided to revive it as a site about elderberries and everything associated with them. What to do with them, how to find them, how to know which ones are good and which ones aren’t, how and when to plant them, ways to cook them, what they’re good for, as well as other interesting info, like the meanings of the elder tree in Celtic lore, historical beliefs about the mystical powers of the elderberry, and references to elderberry in ancient texts and  modern fictional works. So many possibilities!

I created the new site with Wordpress in January of 2008, but it didn't take long before I realized that the people visiting my site had way more to offer, knowledge-wise, than I did. And so the latest rendition of elderberries.com was born, as a social network and discussion forum. Here, I hope that people with a common affinity for the elderberry will share their stories and questions with each other (just as they did on the previous version of the site, but with better tools). Enjoy, and thanks for spreading the word about this fascinating, and often overlooked, berry!