With its extremely fast growth, the American elder aurea (Sambucus canadensis aurea) can help you in your quest for intimacy.

Its sweetly scented flowers are refreshing in cold drinks, stimulating in an infusion that helps reduce fever, and, with their corymb structure soaked in frying batter, make excellent fritters.

It holds out purplish-black fruity bouquets reminiscent of blueberries, blackberries and blackcurrants, but wait until they are very dark, because the immature fruits are toxic. It is advisable to cook them to eliminate any residual toxicity when ripe, known to be very low if detectable. Only birds seem to appreciate it fresh. Like tiny raisins, dehydration concentrates the sugars of the small berries, not very sweet by nature, but easy to dry, like the flowers. Add color and vitamin C to your bread mixes, cakes, muffins, or your morning cereals, whose milk will take on a purple hue, attesting to its rich content of antioxidant anthocyanin pigments, almost abusively exceeding all records, making blueberries pale… Their transformation into pies and jams remains classic and the excellent country wine that it produces does not disconcert the sommelier, with a color and notes that play in the register of grape wines. The umbels ripen almost simultaneously. Two passes and a few quick snips of the scissors are enough to fill bags and bags with them.

The American elder aurea can form clumps in partial shade, where it spreads suckering at the edge of a wood, on the edge of a nourishing forest, bringing privacy to your summer sanctuary. It grows in poor, acidic, heavy or light soil and does not fear strong winds or polluted air. With surface roots, it often seeks moisture, along streams, or in regulated riparian strips. If you prefer to keep the harvest within reach in a compact shrub, do not hesitate to cut back its branches in winter since it fruits on first-year stems. Partially self-fertile. Native for naturalization.