Dub. The flowers, berries, and inner bark of Common Elder.

Syn. Sureau ordinaire (F.), Fliederblumen (G.), Coorteccia, bacche, e fiori di Sambuco (I.), Sabuco (S.), Uktee (Arab.).

The common elder is a very abundant, indigenous, middle-sized shrubby tree, growing commonly in hedges; flowering in June, and ripening its berries in September. It is much branched near the top, and covered with a roughish grey bark. The wood is white, hard, and has a large spongy pith. The leaves are pinnated, composed of five oval, pointed, serrated leaflets, nearly equal at their base. The flowers are in terminal cymes, consisting of five principal branches, and many small ones, with some of the flowers sessile. They are cream-coloured; with the calyx superior and permanent, and the corolla monopetalous, rotate, and somewhat convex. The berries are globular, and when ripe of a purplish black colour.

Qualities.-The flowers have a peculiar faint, sickly odour, and a bitterish taste, which are imparted to water by infusion, and also by distillation, during which a small portion of buty-raceous oil is separated. The berries are inodorous, have a sweetish taste; and yield on expression a fine purple juice1, which contains saccharine matter, jelly, and the malic acid. The inner bark is inodorous, and has a faint, sweetish taste, which is succeeded by a slight bitterness, and a very permanent acrimony. Both water and alcohol extract their virtues.

1 Schola Salernitana, c. xxxviii. p. 406. 2 Van Swieten's Comment, ii. 370.

Dioscoridis. The leaves laid in the subtendinous passages of moles are said to drive them away.

Medical properties and uses.-The flowers and berries are diaphoretic and aperient. The berries were formerly much used in febrile diseases, rheumatism, gout, and eruptive diseases; but they are now scarcely ever ordered. The flowers are used chiefly in fomentations and cooling ointments, and to afford their odour to water in distillation. The bark is a hydragogue purgative, and in large doses proves emetic at the same time. It is said to prove efficacious in dropsy; and in smaller doses to be a useful aperient and deobstruent in various chronic affections. The dose of the bark is from grs. x. to 3 ss., given in wine; or j. may be boiled in O ij. of milk or of water down to Oj., and the fourth part taken for a dose.

Officinal preparations.-Succus spissalus Sambuci nigrae, E. D. Unguentum Sambuci, L. D.