Never noticed this before. What is it?

[Jeff]

I noted a shrub (tree?) I a brush line I'd been lopping off to see from a deer blind this morning and I do not know what it is.  Any idears? It's leafing out before almost everything else.

[rusticretreater]

Red Elderberry

website: identify.plantnet.org

You can click and drag an image onto the web page or upload and it will identify it for you

[Jeff]

Thats what I come up with using google lense here, but I didnt think the leaves were right, and the flowers should be white. Maybe they will turn white.

[thecfarm]

I've been driving around all day and I have not seen any elder berry bushes that look like that?
I just came home to get the dog and saw the post quick and I thought elder berry too.

[Otis1]

It's an elderberry, but what kind I'm not sure.

[customsawyer]

I would say it's an old one. Hence the name "Elder".

[Jeff]

Bahaha! Bahaha!  Good one Dad.  

Got a deal for ya. You know ya want too..  Mr. Truck for that Ranger, and Ill seal the deal with a walleye dinner.

[customsawyer]

I was thinking of the way Tom, DanG, and Bro Nobel used to go back and forth with their wit like that.
The trouble with the truck deal, is I would then have to build something to store it in.

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Looks a little like Beauty berry?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callicarpa_americana
https://shop.arborday.org/beautyberry

Though the wikifolks seem to think it doesn't get that far north?
The way the berries clump up like that is unusual.

[Jeff]

It has 1940s steel he's a tough son of a truck. Put him in sales room.

[Jeff]

Yea, no, I don't think it could survive here. We get some tough winters, and this is pretty much the edge of wilderness, so you would think it would be native. I'll go back out today and check the advancement. If it is elderberry,  it should become obvious.  Where you at @SwampDonkey !

[thecfarm]

Those purple blossoms I have not seen.
But the leaves and stems look like elderberry to me.
As I said, I have not seen elderberry in bloom around here.
One year there was a lot on each side of the brook.
Then the next year there was hardly any.
Must be a little wet in that area?
That's what they like around here.

[Jeff]

Looking more like an elderberry I'd say

[SwampDonkey]

I'm right here, after a day of swinging a clearing saw and being chewed up by black flies. They got me on the neck like little vampires.    

Some of the guys mentioned elderberries already.   That is red berried elder, sambucus racemosa. It isn't edible to humans, but deer and grouse eat them red berries. They are quite pungent, and a broke off stick even smells like nothing you want in a pie.   It is about the toughest shrub there is as far as cold. They will break bud here before the snow is gone. The purplish beginnings will later become white. The ID books don't do it justice at the early stages of flowering when it's still purplish. And like the black elder you can start new ones from cuttings stuck in mud, but with some buds down in the dirt, some above the dirt. The new roots come out of the buried buds. That is a common plant up here along forest roads build in maple forest. It will grow on the berms and ditch lines if trees don't get a hold first. There is an abandoned Christmas tree farm up the road, the frontage is taken over with red berried elder. Some folks call it red elderberry. Same.

[SwampDonkey]

Black elders don't flower until mid summer around here. So Ray's elders are probably the black 'eating' kind and not flowering yet.

[thecfarm]

Sawmpdonkey, I betcha you are right.

[Jeff]

I may need to go out and do some propagation eh?

[Resonator]

I was gonna say elderberries also, but its the wrong time of year for them to be ripe in color.
Genuine elderberries can be made into jelly or wine.

[SwampDonkey]

I was gonna say elderberries also, but its the wrong time of year for them to be ripe in color.
Genuine elderberries can be made into jelly or wine.

This is the plant opening up it's flowers. No berries yet. That opens up into an umbel and becomes white, gets pollinated and produces fruit.

[SwampDonkey]

I may need to go out and do some propagation eh?

You can, but if you want some to eat, find the black kind and propagate those.  Even if you buy one plant at a nursery, you can grow endless plants off it. It's very easy. 

Here's a black one propogated in the grow tent.



Here is red berried elder just flushing out.

[SwampDonkey]

I pick the black ones here to make syrup, they do not ripen all the same time, even on the umbel. I cut the ripened umbels and drop them in a pan and go to a chair and remove the berries. It's a lot of work and them things are tiny. I remove the pits in a food mill before cooking. Did I say it's a lot of work? 

[thecfarm]

My wife does the chair thing. 
She is not too stable on her feet, So I cut them like you do and put them in bags for her to pick the berries off. 
I got the easy job.  

[Machinebuilder]

When I was a young boy we had a black elder berry.

we used to cut the bunched and then rub them across a coarse screen to get the berry's off.