Elderberry

Elderberry bushes grow along nearly every mile of Iowa country road (and along the highways and interstates too, though we usually whiz by too quickly to notice them). There’s a stately grove of elderberries in the ditch near my driveway, so that’s where I began this photography project – and the elderberries immediately humbled me with a crash course in how wildflowers differ from cultivated flowers.

Me, standing in the ditch with pruning nippers in hand:
“Mercy me, but this is an absolutely beautiful flower! I’m cutting extra, these are going in vases all over the house!”

Me, 5 minutes later, with two buckets brimming with cut elderberry blooms:
“Mayday! Elderberries down!”

Yes, elderberry is absolutely gorgeous. Spreading clusters of delicate, creamy blossoms. A sweetly dreamy scent, almost like vanilla. Glossy, symmetrical, deep green foliage. And the only place you can experience it is standing right by an elderberry bush because as soon as you clip off a branch, the clock starts ticking toward total elderberry collapse.

Within a few minutes of cutting, that lovely foliage begins to droop and there’s no going back. Put them in water immediately after cutting? Makes no difference. How about sugar water? Ha. Hairspray? Nope. Nothing I tried kept them perky for more than 10 minutes or so: a tragedy for lovers of cut flowers, and a real challenge for a photographer.

So a good chunk of my photography time for elderberry blooms was spent dashing down the driveway to bring in fresh cuttings. It was good exercise, and good training in having the camera and light setup prepped ahead of time, but it didn’t allow time to do much fine-tuning … a situation I need to get accustomed to, because it turns out elderberries aren’t the only ditch flower that simply can’t contemplate life as a cut specimen. More on that later.

Elderberry blooms are absolutely worth spending your time with, though – either standing in a ditch next to them, or creating the first portrait in my ditch flower series. I hope you enjoy it!

Elderberry, Sambucus
Shoot date: June 30, 2019
Possible use as a cut flower: Sadly, absolutely none