In the shade of the forest, clusters of brilliant red berries seem to glow with color. This is red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa), the cousin of blue elderberry which I wrote about yesterday. There is a lot less written about this beautiful plant–some sources say the berries are edible, some say they are not. My guess is that even if you can safely eat them they aren’t nearly as tasty as their blue cousins or more info would be available.
Despite their names, the Jepson database says that red elderberry can also be a blueish-black color; the way to tell it isn’t blue elderberry is that the dark form of the berries lack the glaucous white coating on their surface.
Flowers Of Marin 