Sambucus canadensisL.

American black elderberry

WFO wfo-0000439346 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Sambucus canadensis, photographed by Jack Forrester
fig. a Jack Forrester, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205847463
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by Mark Apgar
fig. b Mark Apgar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205646765
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by gwt2102
fig. c gwt2102, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 206028665
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. d Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204957343
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by john_hall
fig. e john_hall, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204263903
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by mefisher
fig. f mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205024543
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by Tom Field
fig. g Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204219414
Sambucus canadensis, photographed by Mason Heberling
fig. h Mason Heberling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203798624

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 8,639 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 8,639 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 23 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Aralia sololensis Donn.Sm.
  • Sambucus bipinnata Moench
  • Sambucus bipinnata Schltdl. & Cham.
  • Sambucus canadensis f. aurea (J.F.Cowell ex L.H.Bailey) Rehder
  • Sambucus canadensis f. canadensis
  • Sambucus canadensis subsp. laciniata (A.Gray) A.E.Murray
  • Sambucus canadensis var. canadensis
  • Sambucus canadensis var. delicatissima Schwer.
  • Sambucus canadensis var. laciniata A.Gray
  • Sambucus canadensis var. oreopola (Donn.Sm.) Rehder
  • Sambucus canadensis var. submollis Rehder
  • Sambucus cerulea var. arizonica Sarg.
  • Sambucus eberhardtii Danguy
  • Sambucus intermedia var. insularis Schwer.
  • Sambucus nigra subsp. canadensis (L.) Bolli
  • Sambucus nigra var. canadensis (L.) B.L.Turner
  • Sambucus orbiculata Greene
  • Sambucus oreopola Donn.Sm.
  • Sambucus planteriensis Simon-Louis ex Dippel
  • Sambucus plantierensis Koehne
  • Sambucus rehderiana Schwer.
  • Sambucus repens Raf.
  • Sambucus simpsonii Rehder

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.