Elder harvesting

Only the blue elderberries are edibleSambucus canadensis and S. carulea (found in North America) as well as the European variety S. nigra. The red elder Sambucus pubens has toxic red berries and flowers that are conical rather than flat-topped clusters. "Blue is true and red is dead," is a popular expression among herbal harvesters. 

As far as herbs go, elder is easy to harvest, providing an abundance of food and medicine with a minimum of effort. It is a joy to collect the delicious and useful parts of elder. Be careful not to disturb animals that may be dwelling in the elder. The wise person always asks permission before collecting from this tree. 

Be mindful of all the cautions about using elder bark and roots (see page 7981) however, if you decide that you still want to harvest this part of the elder, collect in the fall of the second to fourth years. When the elder material is dry, store in a glass jar, protected from light and heat. Dampness will cause the blossoms to get musty and lose their aroma. Use within a year. Nature will provide more the next year. 

Stephen, Leslie, Hours in a Library, 4 vols. (London Smith, Elder, 1874-1907) Stevenson, Randall, Modernist Fiction An Introduction (Hemel Hempstead Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992)... 

Unlike BM harvests the success of PBSC harvesting depends on mobilization of progenitor cells into the peripheral blood with cytotoxic agents and/or cytokines. This is influenced by the age of the patient and the duration and type of previous chemotherapy. Among the elderly (> 65 years) and those who have previous treatment with aUylating agents or radiation, mobilization can be severely impaired (5). 

A weakness of time-series studies is that those individuals who die as a result of pollution exposure cannot be identified. The associations of mortality with particle air pollution are stronger in the elderly (21,22,37,38), and deaths are associated with chronic respiratory or cardiovascular problems (43). But it is not clear who is dying. Are they people who would have died within the next couple of days anyway Is air pollution harvesting those who were on the verge of mortality If so, the few days loss of life expectancy may not have major pubhc health significance. 

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