A “Toxic” Spindle and a Punk Wood Sandwich

Red elderberry is extremely common in many areas of the U.S. and Canada; and the long pithy stalks look like great candidates for friction fire spindles. However…

… when I was doing research on this plant (Sambucus racemosa) I learned that many parts of it were known to contain a form of cyanide so I stopped using it a couple of years ago until I could learn more.

I posted questions about the potential for poisoning yourself by using this species in several places online, and emailed a few botanists for their opinions, but until yesterday I didn’t get any satisfactory answers.

It turns out my online buddy Nathan has a degree in plant biology and he set the record straight for me…

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“…all the green growing parts are relatively high in cyanogenic glycosides. It’s essentially a cyanide molecule bound to a sugar molecule inside the plant cell vacuole. When the cell is damaged, the cyanogenic glycoside is exposed to enzymes in the cell that remove the sugar, activating the cyanide. It’s a pretty cool defense mechanism that is effective against anything with mitochondria. From what I understand S. racemosa has higher concentration of cyanide in the berries compared to blue elderberry. Cyanide is volatile at low temps (70-80 F) and even a little cooking gets rid of it (from blue elderberry berries). There’s not enough to create toxic cyanide gas. Never eaten the berries of red elderberry. I wouldn’t. There are stories of kids getting sick from making whistles of green elderberry wood. I’ve made flutes and whistles out of it, but always dried it first. As long as you aren’t chewing on it, I don’t think there’s a problem. Our bodies use thiosulfate to detox small amounts of cyanide. The danger is when we overwhelm that. That’s why eating apple seeds doesn’t kill us. You would have to eat like two pounds of apple seeds to be in danger.

…It’s only green living cells that contain cyanide. And even then, I don’t think there’s any danger as long as you aren’t chewing on it. There’s stories of California natives hollowing out the small green stems and using them to smoke from. I only know of one verifiable story where people got sick. It was a religious group having a gathering here in California. They were making elderberry punch from the berries and put a bunch of leaves and stems in the pot. A bunch of them got sick. No one died. Once the stems are dry and dead, there shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve also handled plenty of green elderberry without gloves, removing bark for drying the stems for flutes.”

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Please do your own research, but this opinion was enough to put my mind at ease, so I grabbed a nice looking dead stalk from an elderberry bush and went to work.

I pulled a very rotten chunk from an old western red cedar stump for my hearth, and used some punk wood from the same stump for the bundle.

The spindle performed beautifully and I am excited to have another great option that is so plentiful in my local forests. As mentioned, this species has a very broad range, so you can check to see if it grows in your area too.

I left the drilling portion in real time to highlight that with extremely soft materials like this rotten cedar, speed is the key to getting an ember without grinding too deeply into the hearth before it builds enough heat for combustion. I tried to keep the pressure light and the speed up until the very end, when I made a few pressure strokes to ignite the pile.

When using punk wood on its own as a tinder bundle, I find that it works best to create a small divot for the ember, with a lining of powdered punk on both sides of it. Once it has a healthy smolder going, I like to pin it in place with another piece of punk and blow it to flames.

This material can take a little bit more time and patience than fibrous bundles, but it is a very forgiving option as it can be blown into flames repeatedly if needed. Punk wood also seems to respond well to higher pressure forced oxygen than other materials, so if you are having trouble getting it to flame up, try blowing harder than you’re used to.

Knife: ESEE Laser Strike
Spindle: Red Elderberrry (Sambucus racemosa)
Hearth & Tinder Bundle: Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata)

Music: Last of the Mohicans on Guitar by Luca Stricagnoli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.