Who are you Sylvain Thomassin?
Sylvain Thomassin — Advice, project studies, activities, training
JI was 20 when I started working as a nature guide, I’m now 70, and I’ve never stopped doing it, working with a wide variety of people: holiday families, baby walkers, teenagers from disadvantaged neighbourhoods, executives at company seminars, schoolchildren, the psychomotor impaired, etc. I’ve always done it in different ways: outdoor or indoor workshops,
Sylvain Thomasson
The Author
About Elderberry
The elderberry has just become the leading plant supplier of medicines and food supplements. This is yet another star to add to its lustre, as it has long had an impressive fan club of plants and animals who serve and venerate it. However, there are hardly any more members than those who hate him!
The Advantages
This test will help you take sides. Estimate how many of the following 10 statements are true:
- The elder is nicknamed the Prince of Ruins because it likes to grow in dry, poor, stony soil.
- Elderberries are poisonous when raw.
- – The heady scent of elderflowers encourages bees to come and collect the abundant nectar.
- Until the 12th century, pilgrims visiting Jerusalem could contemplate the elder tree from which Judas hanged himself after his betrayal.
- The Latin name for the elder tree, sambucus, was inspired by the name of a small Greek flute, the sambuca.
- Elderberry was once reputed to attract the devil to bakeries and stables.
- The elderberry is known as the Englishman’s grape, in allusion to the poor taste of the wine made from its berries, which was once drunk in England.
- In ancient medicine, the use of elderberry was more often the result of magical rituals or the search for a placebo effect than a genuine therapeutic approach.
- Since the beginning of the 21st century, contemporary scientific research has unfairly neglected elderberry in favour of other more ‘bankable’ plants: green tea, turmeric, ginger, etc.
- Elder trunks and branches are mainly used as fuel, as their soft, twisted wood is not suitable for home use.
Well done if you answered « zero »! If you didn’t, there’s a good chance that reading My friend the eldertree has plenty of surprises in store for you!
about My friend the elder tree
You never cease to amaze me, despite almost fifty years of companionship! At the end of winter, I’m still amazed to see your skeletal structure come back to life, with its cylindrical stems like femurs, its curved branches like ribs and its divisions of branches marked by moss sleeves that look like joints swollen with arthritis. And yet your impetuous foliage is a testament to your extraordinary new-found vitality. As the fine days go by, you reveal other facets of your unusual lifestyle and present me with riddles that I don’t always know how to answer, even if I do draw on the knowledge of others. For example, who can tell me what the intense fragrance of your flowers is all about? I’ve just finished a book dedicated to you. It’s the fruit of a series of questions that I wanted to put to bed by first of all writing a short synthesis of field observations and information from various sources that I had at hand: personal books or books borrowed from friends and family, publications easily accessible on the Internet or consultation of exchanges on social networks. Some of these sources still give structure to the book. But others simply pointed me in the wrong direction or proved impossible to validate, even though they were sometimes copied and pasted on numerous occasions! And the first draft that came out of my work only left me hungry for more, while whetting my appetite to find out more about you! It took me five years of patience, attention and hard work to satisfy that appetite, without exhausting it. In the course of this adventure, I have discovered your incredible adaptive potential and the complexity of the links you have woven to ensure your survival and your descendants. But I have also gradually glimpsed your place as one of the most emblematic wild plants in European folklore. There is no doubt that you have no equal when it comes to the beliefs associated with your strangeness, but also with your healing powers and, secondarily, with your domestic, food, craft and recreational uses. In conclusion, beneath your appearance as a twisted shrub familiar with unhealthy places, I’ve discovered a character who is amusing, captivating, seductive and generous. Your friendship is a true gift from the gods, or rather from the fairies that you hide under your bark. I hope I’ll become your wood when I’m underground, you who have so often given me your flowers, your fruit and your stems!
