Sambucus racemosaL.

red-berried elder

WFO wfo-0000439333 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. a Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205705050
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. b Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205559129
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Shane Johnson
fig. c Shane Johnson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204641972
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. d Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203970048
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Theo Summer
fig. e Theo Summer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205234374
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. f Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204187140
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. g Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203248934
Sambucus racemosa, photographed by Todd Boland
fig. h Todd Boland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204067488

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 = 6,240 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 6,240 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 32 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.

  • Sambucus acuminata Greene
  • Sambucus borealis Greene
  • Sambucus callicarpa Greene
  • Sambucus dimidiata Raf.
  • Sambucus leiosperma Leiberg
  • Sambucus melanocarpa A.Gray
  • Sambucus melanocarpa var. communis Schwer.
  • Sambucus melanocarpa var. furstenbergii Schwer.
  • Sambucus microbotrys Rydb.
  • Sambucus pubens Michx.
  • Sambucus pubens f. pubens
  • Sambucus pubens var. arborescens Torr. & A.Gray
  • Sambucus pubens var. dissecta Britton
  • Sambucus pubens var. leucocarpa Torr. & A.Gray
  • Sambucus pubens var. melanocarpa (A.Gray) M.L.Samutina
  • Sambucus pubens var. rosiflora Zabel
  • Sambucus pubens var. xanthocarpa Nieuwl.
  • Sambucus pubescens Pers.
  • Sambucus racemosa f. pubens (Michx.) Voss
  • Sambucus racemosa f. rosiflora (Carrière) B.Boivin
  • Sambucus racemosa subsp. arborescens (Torr. & A.Gray) A.E.Murray
  • Sambucus racemosa subsp. racemosa
  • Sambucus racemosa var. arborescens (Torr. & A.Gray) A.Gray
  • Sambucus racemosa var. laciniata W.D.J.Koch ex DC.

and 8 more.

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.