Botanical lore

Like willow, alder is found near water, whether rivers, lakes or wetlands. Individually, alders can look gnarled and short, but growing collectively their light green foliage will shoot up high, allowing a rich canopy of plants to grow around its roots, such as meadowsweet, ground elder and wild garlic. Because these in turn attract a wide variety of animals, that include insects, amphibians, water birds and small mammals (as well as fish when part of a shaded river bank), alder creates a fertile, vibrant, lush green space around it.

 

It can also grow in mixed woodlands, alongside ash, birch and willow. Alder roots grow deeply into wet ground, binding and invigorating soggy ground in places that other trees cannot survive because of deficiency in oxygen. Their roots not only protect river banks from erosion, alder contain a high nitrogen content and their roots can bind nitrogen from the air through simple symbiosis, a fact revealed in the autumn when their grey-blackish leaves cover the ground.

 

However this nitrogen is nutritious and, with other minerals, is passed on into the undergrowth. Because alder strengthens, drains and ventilates soil, it protects wetlands from becoming marshland. Smooth and olive brown in colour initially, with light horizontal sap pustules, alder bark becomes fissured and dark as it matures. The wood is reddish and the freshly cut sap is orange-red, appearing like blood. Most durable when constantly wet, alder wood has been in use for centuries in creating bridges, pumps, sluices and piles (for causeways across marshes such as Ravenna, and for medieval cathedrals and buildings, that include parts of Venice). Older still are the crannogs - built in Neolithic times.

 

After about thirty years alder matures and produces sexes of flower on one tree (monoecious). Its leaves appear after the flowers, and are sticky to begin with (hence its latin name glutinosa). The male catkins hang down like the birch (alder belongs to the birch family), while the female catkins mature into dark woody cones, sometimes called wattles, which is unusual for a deciduous tree in the temperate zone. The cones often stay on the tree during the winter while the winged nutlets, using tiny air bags, fly or float away on the water to germinate downstream.

 

Alder has been in use for centuries. Its bark was used to tan leather and for dyes, as were the leaves, while its wood, like oak was used for charcoal production (used in smelting iron), and the sticky twigs in spring were made into brooms or besoms to catch remaining fleas in its leaves. Alder is rarely used for building, as woodworm is attracted to its protein-rich wood. Both leaves and bark are astringent and antiseptic and can be used as a gargle, and a preparation from the bark was used to heal rashes or festering wounds. In homoeopathy the bark tincture is still used for skin and glands.

 

Odd notes: Due to alder is the saying: 'what can no house ever contain?' (the piles on which it is built). Bog alder or ‘scottish mahogany‘ excellent for chairs due to long immersion in bog.
Wood: pipes, milk-pails, water-resistant uses, cigar-boxes (reddish & cedar-like) oars, cricket bats, horsewhips, bridges, troughs; Bark: (stains reddish when cut) red dye for tanning and fish-nets ; Flowers: green dye ; Twigs: charcoal and gunpowder, brown dye ; Leaves: tans leather, makes horses tongues black, catches fleas (sticky), pigs will not eat ; Medicinal: bark decoction for inflammation and swellings. Alder leaves in shoes ease sore feet;

birch family: betulaceae common alder (alnus glutinosa)

 

Mythology

In the welsh Mabinogion, the alder is the sacred tree of the giant king Bran, the Blessed, (also known as Bendigeidfran), whose name means crow or raven. In the second Branch of the Mabinogion, Bran gives his Cauldron of Rebirth to the Irish in connection with the marriage of his sister Branwen to the Irish king Matholwch, but problems ensue. Bran invades Ireland, wading the sea (he is too big for any boat) and lying across the river Linon so his armies can walk across him. However, he is fatally wounded and the cauldron is destroyed. Before dying, Bran instructs his seven remaining comrades to cut off his head, and take it to Gwyn Fryn (the white hill) near London to face south. Bran's head then talks, sings and keeps them in blissful company for seven years, until the spell is accidentally broken. The head of king Bran is then buried near the tower of London, and the ravens are still there where, according to legend, they still hold a magical protection for Britain.

 

Another connection between singing and alder is Orpheus, whose name is possibly short for orephruoeis 'growing on the river bank'.

Other names of alder, else, elsa, elise, or the scandinavian els, elze (service tree), hint at the sepulchral nature of the island of Alyscamps on the Rhone, or the elusive Elysian Fields, and the story of Niamh (of the Golden Hair) who kept Ossin (Ossian) below the waves in the Land of Youth for many years, has similar overtones of the connection between water, tree and blissful forgetfulness.

This theme is also illustrated in the medieval german legend called the Wulfdietrich Saga, where an alder woman appears seductively to foolish wanderers and teaches them a lesson by turning herself into a hairy, bark-like creature if they embrace her. Called Rough Else, she is a wild-looking woman of the woods, covered in hair, who, in another part of the story puts a spell on the hero eventually making him mad. He runs through the woods, living on herbs for six months, after which she takes him on a ship over the sea to another land where she is queen. Bathing herself in a magical well that washes away her rough skin, she becomes transformed into the beautiful Sigeminne (victory of love). Part of a german oral tradition, recorded by minstrels since 1221, this theme of madness and initiation in the wildwoods resonates often in other celtic tales. Suibhne, Sweeney, who is turned into the mad owl in the Irish poem epic (and must survive on watercress) for many years, or the hunted Diarmid and Grainne, as well as Deirdre (of the Sorrows) who with the three sons of Uisneach, must hide in the alder swamps of Argyll during their flight from king Conchobar. 

Alder sap turns red when it comes into contact with air, suggesting blood, which consequently gives the tree a certain mystique. Living in wet marshy areas, alder is often treated as an imaginative creature of the mist and twilight in a world in which people never feel entirely comfortable. The Avernii were a gaulish tribe of the alder, hinting at the rather hidden connection between alder and Avalon (from ubhal or apple) - an underground thread through many stories. A wooden goddess made of alder, dated between 728 and 524 BC, was found in a peat bog at Ballachulish, where it was sunk in a bog or lake, possibly as offering. 

Added notes: Manannan MacLyr (MacLir) ‘king of waters’ and sea journeys (gave his name to Isle of Man).