Alder by Anna Fraser (Alnus glutinosa) Family : Betulaceae

Contents

PART ONE: ALDER FACTS

What' s in a name?

Common names: European Alder. Common Alder. Tag Alder. Winterberry. Feverbush. Owler.

Some say the Alder's name may have been derived from the old Anglo-Saxon root alor or aler or the old German elo or elawer, meaning reddish brown. Its bark and wood contains a lot of red colouring matter. The Saani people (formerly known as Laplanders, a name which they dislike) create their beautiful rich soft leather ware by chewing the bark and then using their saliva for dyeing the leather. When the tree is cut, the pale wood takes on a reddish hue, which gave some old woodcutters the eerie feeling the tree was bleeding like a human being.
This tree was certainly seen by some as our ancestor and relative. Scandinavian mythology tells us the first woman was fashioned from an Alder trunk, whereas in Irish mythology the first man was said to be made from an Alder. So it may well be that this tree was simply considered as one of our elders or ‘alders’. Another possible origin of the name may be that the root-word Al is derived from the Scandinavian Alf, meaning Elf -for, as we shall see, the Alder is known as the ‘King of the Fairies’.
The word glutinosa refers to the stickiness of the young leaves and the gluey texture of crushed leaves. The famous herbalist Nicolas Culpepper (1616-1654, he died in the civil war) had some excellent advice on how to use these young sticky Alder leaves usefully: “The said leaves gathered while the morning dew is on them, and brought into a chamber troubled with fleas, will gather them thereunto, which being suddenly cast out, will rid the chamber of these troublesome bed-fellows.”

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Habitat

Alnus glutinosa, the Common or European Alder, is a native of Europe, from south of the Arctic Circle down to North Africa and east wards into Asia.  Introduced elsewhere. If you meet an Alder tree, you are bound to be close to water, for they like damp places such as marshes, riversides, lakesides, and wet woods. Its tiny roots seem to attract moisture, so it is often boggy or soggy soil around it. Extensive agricultural drainage schemes have made this cousin of the birch and hazel less abundant than it once was, but it is still very common. The tree used to be coppiced for the gunpowder industry. Alder trees are often used in land reclamation schemes, especially the Grey Alder (A.incata). Alders are helped in their colonisation of damp by their ability to form adventitious roots, similar to the stilt roots of certain tropical trees.

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Our Alder population is seriously under threat by the blight of root rot!

Sadly, our Alders are now under serious treat from a blight, which is killing hundreds of thousands of Alder trees along the rivers in Europe. These Alders were affected by a fungus disease caused by two introduced species of the dreaded Phytophthora family. Research has indicated that they are P. cambivora and another fungus, similar (if not identical) to P.fragariae. Both may have been introduced on imported plants and have hybridized to form a very potent and aggressive disease- causing organism.
Since this new hybrid was first discovered to be causing the sudden death of Alder trees in Britain in 1993, about 10% of Alders have been killed in southern England and Wales and is estimated to be the cause of 2% of the Alder population each year!
The blight which caused the failure of the potato crop in the Irish faminine was also a Phytophthora species. The fungus causes root rot and as the root tissues are destroyed, the trees are unable to absorb water and nutrients and causes abnormally small leaves, wilting, collar knot and other signs of distress. . The bark around the soil-line may appear darkened. Cutting away some bark should reveal red-brown discoloration in the wood underneath it.
There is presently no known effective cure and the best that can be done is trying to prevent its spread. Phytophthora species can survive in the soil for years, as long as moist conditions persist. The spores can also survive and travel via waterways, runoff water, on wet car tyres, shoes, equipment, etc. Wounds are not required for infection. In gardens the occurence of this fungus disease is usually treated with a combination of measures, including the improvement of drainage, destruction of all infected material, cleanliness, fungicides and so on. However it is difficult to see how this type of treatment can help in the case of Alder trees dotted about the country, especially where they grow along rivers. Flooded and saturated soil conditions for 6-8 hours are known to be especially conducive to the spread of Phytophthora.
The new hybrid has also seriously affected Alder populations in Holland, France and Sweden and is spreading in Germany and Austria. North American Alders have not been affected. Importation of Alder species from infected countries is illegal to the USA and Canada.
The nightmare is that the Alder could vanish from our landscape just like the English Elm did, due to 'Dutch Elm Disease', which was caused by an imported beetle. We can only hope and pray that continued research and sensible management will help to curb this disaster.

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Characteristics

The Alder grows up to 20 meters high, but it often appears as a shrub. The young trees grow very fast and can gain up to half a meter each season. They can be said to be mature when about 60 years of age and have a lifespan of about 150 years. Uncoppiced trees have tall trunks, narrow crowns. 

Alder is an interesting tree with some unusual characteristics. It is the only deciduous (non-evergreen) tree which has tiny cones to bear its seeds. They are in fact the female catkins of the tree and they make Alder easy to recognise in winter. Its branches are not bare as so many of our other deciduous trees, because the winter branches are crowded with immature catkins and old empty seed-cones.  The flowers are catkins formed in the year before ripening. The male flowers are drooping cylinders and the female catkins look like tiny cones. 
On closer observation we find that the leaf buds are sheathed in purplish scales with a light misty bloom on it, very much like red grapes have. Each bud has its own bud stalk, also unusual in trees, and are arranged in a spiraling fashion around the branch. 
Many of the young trees have a conical shape, vaguely reminiscent of conifers, but as the tree matures it tends to have a more open straggly crown. In the past Alder used to be grown extensively in coppices, which means that the wood is harvested every 6 -12 years in the winter, which leaves the bole to produce new growth in the spring. The wood was then turned into a high quality charcoal, much valued as gun powder for its property of igniting  very reliably and easily.

The leaves are roundish with a characteristic indentation where one would expect the tip of the leaf to be, like the top of a heart-shape. During the summer these leaves darken to a deep green and their tops are quite shiny and leathery.
Alders have an extra-ordinary ability to resist the decaying influence of water. Its timber is almost indefinitely rot proof in a wet environment and its trunks are the foundation of much of the glory of Venice and the graceful houses lining the canals of Amsterdam. Its shiny leathery leaves resist the onslaught of the wet autumn and early winter rains far better than any other deciduous tree. The leaves do not colour in the autumn, just become darker and wither to brown or black and often can be found on the branches as late as December! Its tiny seeds have two corky wings, containing air bubbles, which helps them to float on water in their search for a place to settle.

An other remarkable property of Alder is that it is has large root nodules, which contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This allows the roots to grow, rather than suffocate, in an environment with stagnant water and has the bountiful bonus that it adds fertility to the soil wherever it grows. This helps grasses and plants growing in the shade of Alder. Nitrogen is the fertiliser which increases the length of the stems, the size of the leaves, flowers and fruits. Without nitrogen plants are stunted and foliage may become prematurely yellow.
All this makes Alder an excellent tree to provide both shade from the summer sun and wind brakes in exposed, damp areas for grazing animals. Maybe it is one of the many reasons why the tree is associated with the energies of extremely ancient Divinities, like Io, the Milky Way, Goddess of the Sacred Cow.

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Other Alder species occurring in Great Britain

Alnus glutinosa ' Laciniata': Like the Common Alder, except the leaves are different with 6 or 7 bluntly pointed lobes.
Alnus glutinosa 'Imperialis': A smaller Alder with far less robust branches and deeply lobed, hence it is known sometimes as the 'Cut-leaved' Alder. Each of the 6- 7 pairs of lobes is narrow and pointed, as is the tip of the leaf. 
Grey Alder ( Alnus incana): A native of Europe, except in the North-west. Often planted in land reclamation schemes, e.g. on colliery spoil heaps and on old tips and as shelterbelts on motorway verges. Smooth grey bark; oval leaves pointed at the end and grey underneath; stalkless female catkins.
A. incana 'Aurea': A smaller tree with smaller golden leaves, which turn orange in the autumn. 
A. incana 'Laciniata': An Alder with small hairs on its shoots and small  deeply lobed leaves with toothed edges (6-8 pairs).
A. incana 'Pendula': A small tree up to 6 meters high with long hanging branches.
A. incana ' Ramulis coccineis': Has orange-red shoots and bright red leaf buds.
Green Alder (Alnus viridis): Native in the Alps and South-east Europe. A variable species, which  is smaller than the common Alder, and often appears like a shrub. Sharply toothed roundish leaves with a pointed end. Catkins appearing with leaves. Reddish brown glossy pointed buds.
Italian Alder (Alnus cordata): A native of South Italy and Corsica. Very fast growing handsome tree with conic, rather dense crown with glistening leaves and relatively large 'cones'. The leaves are heart shaped and can be tinged orange when new. Sometimes used as a street tree, as it is compact, attractive and will tolerate air pollution.
Oregon or Red Alder (Alnus rubra or A. oregana): Native of North West America. A narrow tree when young, which will grow on to grow a broad dome with level branches. Buds can be dark red and reddish leaf veins. Oval, dark green  lobed leaves with a pointed end, which are much greyer underneath with rusty coloured downy hairs.
Smooth Alder (Alnus rugosa): A small Alder from North America. It has sticky twigs; catkins come before the leaves, and there may be as many as ten in a head, the cones have no stalks.

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Cultivation

The Alder is easily grown from root propagation. Cuttings and layers of the young wood can also be used, but the best way to obtain healthy trees with plenty of character is probably to raise them directly from seed. Gather the catkins in autumn as soon as the scales begin to open a little. Put catkins on a sheet, exposed to the sun for a few days or in a dry room. Turn them frequently. The scales will open widely and the seeds fall out. Sow the seed in March with a thin covering of soil. Keep well watered. After a year the seedlings can be moved from seedbed to nursery row, where they are allowed to grow  for one or two more years to gain strength an height in readiness for planting out.
As a pioneer tree the Alder requires good light in an open habitat. When it becomes heavily shaded it will die back and let other trees take over.
Once established, the Alder is not easily rooted out of the ground again, which is the reason why foresters used to seldom mixed it with other trees in a plantation in the past, but reserved it often for damp waste grounds, which would be costly to prepare for the planting of other crops. Nowadays the Alder is frequently used in forestry as a nurse crop to protect and bring on other valuable timber trees.

The tree  is very suitable for coppicing and can be cut, about every 10 years, in the winter. It will send up new shoots in the spring and will then have a much more bushy appearance.

One of the great advantages of the Alder is that it does not injure grass growing below and around it. In fact, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria growing in its root nodules, will help to feed the grass. Nitrogen increases the length of the stems, the size of the leaves, flowers and fruit. Without sufficient nitrogen plants are stunted and the foliage may become prematurely yellow.
Since the Alder is associated with the "Divine Smith" (please see below), it is interesting to note that thunder and lightning also bring a gift of nitrogen. A good thunderstorm can leave the land enriched with as much as a ton of nitrogen to the acre.
All this makes the Alder an excellent tree to provide both shade from the summer sun and wind breaks in exposed damp areas for grazing animals. Maybe this is yet another reason for its ancient association with Io, the ancient Goddess of the Sacred Cow.

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Alder Medicine

The qualities of Alder to balance fire and water were known to ancient herbalists and the leaves make an excellent poultice for all sorts of swellings (which are due to accumulation of fluids) and inflammations (hot and throbbing like fire). The poultice can be made of young fresh leaves or dried leaves, which have simmered for a couple of minutes in some hot water, and are then applied as a warm pack. Take good care not to make it so hot that the skin burns! Sometimes a handful of pulped leaves was moistened with warm milk. An example of the use of Alder leaves as a traditional remedy is for the relief of swollen and inflamed breasts from congestion or mastitis or cracked, sore nipples.

In the days before ambulances and casualty departments, Alder leaf poultices were also a much valued ally against gangrene for battle-wounds and for crushed flesh in accidents, because its properties are anti-inflammatory, haemostatic (stops bleeding) and astringent.

In the Alps, country folk used thin cloth bags of heated leaves for the relief and cure of rheumatism.

The leaves were put in working boots, shoes and socks next to the skin to soothe aching and burning feet. Thus they helped a Lancashire lass to walk miles to work at the mill, aided the old Celtic warrior in feats of endurance and assisted peasants to keep their feet cool during the long hot days of hay making. Fresh crushed leaves can also be used to soothe chapped skin.

Alder bark is also excellent medicine. Take it either from pruned branches or coppiced trees, so it won’t kill the tree. The fresh bark can cause vomiting, but the chemicals causing this disappear on drying, thus only the dried bark should be used.

The powdered dried bark can be made up into pills or used as a decoction for general digestive weakness, diarrhoea, enteritis or stomach inflammations. Bark decoctions were also used to reduce or stop bleeding in internal hemorrhages, for example after passing blood in the stools or vomiting blood due to stomach ulcers. Similarly, the decoction can be used on external wounds to reduce and stop bleeding.

The decoction of the dried powdered bark was used to wash external inflammation, scrofula (tuberculosis of the cervical lymph glands) secondary syphilis and other forms of skin diseases.

The inner bark boiled in vinegar makes a useful external wash for lice and skin problems like scabies and scabs.

Its anti-inflammatory properties made the bark decoction a good gargle for sore throats, tonsillitis, pharyngitis and similar conditions. It was also used as a mouth-wash for inflamed gums, mouth ulcers and due to its astringency, it even helped for loose teeth.

Sticks of frayed bark have been used to clean teeth and the powdered dried bark was employed as a constituent of toothpaste.

The vibrational ALDER remedy of Mother Nature's Celtic Tree remedies has the following indications:
Keyword: Integration

• For people who feel clumsy, bogged down, stuck with stagnant emotions, old resentments, hurts and bitterness.

• For lives that are a monotonous, plodding, heavy-going struggle.

• For times when we are full of good intentions, but can not act accordingly.
  Alder helps us to clear our emotional marshland and helps to rekindle spirit again.

• It helps us to balance the elemental forces within us and lessens too great a gap between thinking and action.

• For when our life seems to have no foundation and none of our dreams will take off. 

• For times when our emotions overwhelm and flood us.

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Traditional Uses of the Wood

The wood of the Alder is light, quite brittle when young and easily worked. It is often worked while still green and will turn well on a lathe. The cream coloured newly cut wood turns a pink orange whilst working on it. This ‘bleeding’; causes the more mature wood to be beautifully tinted and veined. It was therefore much sought after by furniture makers. In the Highlands of Scotland, it was used a lot for making chairs and thus came to be known as ‘Scottisch mahogany. Cabinet makers were especially fond of the roots and knots of Alder wood. Mrs. Grieves reports that it was also used for cart and spinning wheels, bowls, spoons, wooden heels, herring-barrel staves, etc. On the European continent it was used for cigar boxes, because of it reddish cedar like appearance. In Lancashire it was used to make clogs for the textile mill towns and it was similarly used in South Scotland. The bodgers, working in the coppices and woods, cut the green Alder into roughly the right size for clogs. They then left it to season and send the material on to the workshop to finish the clogs.

In ancient Ireland, Alder was used to make pails and other dairy equipment.

Green Alder branches can make good whistles and panpipes, an important attribute for a tree to possess in the days before mass entertainment.

As we have mentioned before, Alder poles were a favourite timber for underground foundations in damp or wet conditions.  It was used as piles under houses, bridges, boat jetties, canal lock gates, pumps and troughs. The ancient Roman writer, Virgil, claims that the first boats were made of Alder wood. The timber can resist decay in a wet environment almost indefinitely. Venice floats partly on the strength of Alder trees. However, it is not very good for fencing in dry land, since the wood seems to need the water to balance its fire power in order to remain solid. Alder fencing posts can rot within the year at the part between the earth and the air.

Before synthetic dyes started to come into general use, the Alder gave us some of the very finest dyes for wool and linen. The wonderful Mrs. Grieves, author of “A modern Herbal” informs us in great detail: “Both bark and young shoots dye yellow and with a little copper a yellowish -grey, useful in shadows of flesh in tapestry. The shoots cut in March will dye cinnamon, and if dried and powdered a tawny shade. The fresh wood yields a pinkish-fawn dye and the catkins green. The bark is used as a foundation for blacks, with the addition of copperas. Alone it dyes woolens a reddish colour (Aldine Red -(which was a favourite colour of our Celtic ancestors). An ounce (of bark), dried and powdered, boiled in 3/4 pint of water with an equal amount of logwood, with solution of copper, tin and bismuth, 6 grains of each, 2 drops of iron vitriol, will dye a deep boue de Paris.” ("boue" means "mud" in French, but the colour of mud differs of course with varying local soils, so I can't alas say what exact colour this produces - Anna) 

Nowadays the wood is often used as woodpulp. In the USA the timber is of considerable  economic importance, as it is the third most important hardwood export in the U.S. after red and white oak. In Canadian forestry high quality red alder logs are said to be approximately equal in value to that of a douglas fir log. Red alder wood is used in the manufacture of fine furniture, specialized veneers, plywood, paper and pallets. 

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PART TWO: ALDER TRADITIONS

The Phoenix of the wetlands

There is an ancient Welsh bardic poem called The Battle of the Trees, in which the author seems to describe the primordial history of Divine consciousness as it created the World as we know it.

   “I have been in many shapes
     before I attained a congenial form.
     I have been a drop in the air.
     I have been a shining star.
     I have journeyed as an eagle.
     I have been a boat in the sea”, etc. etc.

“There is nothing in which I have not been”.  Much of the old Welsh poetry is, for modern minds, full of riddles. My understanding of the poem is that it describes the qualities of the various trees as they have helped to shape the world. It says about  Alder: “The Alder trees in the first line, they made the commence-ment”. This statement reflects the great transforming influence, which generations of Alder trees must have had on our swampy, boggy, primordial landscape. Over thousands of years they have helped to create an environment, that was fit for us to live in.

Alder is associated in mythology with resurrection and the power of evaporation. After the floodgate of life has been opened, it is the tree of the healing of time that dries up the waters of the womb of life. The fluidity of the dreamtime changes into solid form. The word is made flesh once more. It resurrect the cycle once again. In Homer’s Odyssey Alder is named the first of the three trees of resurrection. The two other are White Poplar and Cypress.
The energy of the Alder has always been closely connected with the yearly journey of the Sun in our temperate climate. The Alder month contains the Spring Equinox, when the powers of the Sun is, once again, restored to us.
The reverence in which Alder was held is also expressed by its close associations with the creative energies of some very ancient, senior deities. Examples are: The Celtic God-Hero Bran-the Blessed. Io, the sacred all-giving cow, who was said to have given birth to the Milky Way. Rhea (= rhythm). Chronos (= time), also known as Saturn or “Father Time”
Just as its timber has been the foundation for many towns, bridges, boat jetty’s and other structures in boggy conditions, so Alder has helped to lay the foundation for usable fertile areas, where before there was nothing but swamp.
Alder is able to do this, because it has great powers of integration. It is the great magic of this wetland tree is that it balances all the four elements: water, fire, air and earth. Its affinity with water is obvious. Its affinity with air expresses itself not only because it is, like all other trees, part of the lungs of the Earth, but in its nitrogen fixing nodules (nitrogen is a molecule occurring in air). Alder helps to make fertile earth and helps to stabilise riverbanks. 

The tree has always been considered to be one of the foremost containers of the transforming power of fire. This association may be a bit confusing when we see an Alder growing by a lake or riverside or when we take a few dead branches and find it is a rather poor, very sluggish burning fuel. Its affinity with fire shows in its ability to evaporate the wetlands. The Alder’s power to be a steady source of heat is only released, after it has been exposed to the slow alchemical process of being turned into charcoal.
For all these reasons Alder is the Phoenix, the firebird of resurrection, which rises out of the wet-lands. Its spirit possesses the transforming power of fire to free the earth from too much water.
The tree calendar honours this by naming the fourth month (March 18-April 14) as the Alder month. This is the time when the catkins Alder bloom and when the winter floods are dried up by the spring sun. During this month we celebrate the Spring Equinox and the days are lengthening and becoming longer than the nights. In the North of Europe the word for spring is ‘lent’ from the verb to lengthen. Here, spring was also known as the Moon of the wakening Alder.
Alder is also associated with the energy of Aries and Mars and the strengthening power of the Sun in the spring, its journey throughout the summer and then its waning power. Its red dye was traditionally used in Midsummer rituals to paint the faces of Sacred Kings.

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The King of the Fairies

Alder is known as “The King of the Fairies”. To understand the significance of this honourary title we have to wonder just what ‘fairies’ are! Do fairies really exist or are they merely the product of our ancestors fertile imagination, telling tales around the fire side?

The ancient tradition of story-telling was designed to enrich our consciousness and to (re)connect our soul to the source we all come from. In order to do this, you need to describe a lot of energies, which are very difficult to define. If you want the stories to be enjoyable for people of all ages and backgrounds, it is no use giving lectures full of abstract dry concepts, but a poetic parable can be entertainment and learning for all.

Fairies are remarkably accurate poetic descriptions of the energy-entities in whom thinking and doing are not yet separated.
The root of the word comes from the French verb faire, meaning to do. Thus fairies is another word for do-ers Because their doing and thinking is not separated, as it is in people, fairies have the ability to effect instant transformations. They are little sparks of the Divine energy we learned about in the Bible, when it was written “God said: Let there be light and there was light”. Hence fairies live in a different time-space continuum than we do. 
In legends and tales we come across all sorts of different tribes of fairy folk, such as elves, dwarves and goblins. They are unsurpassed practitioners of exquisite arts and crafts. They live in the earth, in plants and other natural habitats, for example inside a hill. The magical crafts they practice are a metaphor for Divine conscious-ness shaping the minerals in the earth into the magic jewels, weaponry and armour of life. These images are symbolic of the many plants and life forms in this world.
Fairies often have an obsession for gold, which is symbolic of pure, incorruptible radiating harmony. They have a fascination with rings, which are Nature’s cycles, or precious stones. Stones are symbols for cohesion, stability and strength and the particular type of stone gives a further indication of the nature of the cohesive strength a fairy possesses or is questing for. Thus, fairies are the energies of creative intelligence in Nature.
Good fairies do life-enhancing deeds or make life-enhancing jewels and help in Nature’s evolutionary process. Evil or wicked fairies represent the decomposing, destructive forces of Nature. Bad-mannered, slimy, stinking trolls are a good example of the vivid evocative imagery the old story makers employed to describe decomposing energies!
All trees and plants have fairy energy. They turn the minerals in the earth and the magic of sun and water unceasingly into the jewels of life. The reputation of fairies as extremely hard workers is not just idle talk.

The Alder has the honour of being “The King of the Fairies”, because its integrating energy was an important force in making the primordial swamps habitable for life as we know it. “Alder fought in the front line”.
It was said that fairies used the female Alder catkins to dye their clothes, which makes them invisible to human eyes.
Again this makes sense in the old poetic storytelling tradition. For how is it possible for unbalanced, self-centered human beings to perceive these magic energies, dressed in green, made by the life juices of this balancing tree? 
We are simply too much out of focus, out of tune. Our thinking, feeling and doing are separated, so we can’t perceive the fairies. Traditionally fairies are only seen by (as yet) innocent children or ‘simpletons’ who remain pure and uncontaminated by our culture, or by people with a heart full of love.
Another way of putting this wise bit of folklore into words is: The cloth the fairies are weaving is the cloth of life itself.  The Alder seed contains new life in an, as yet, invisible form. The potential tree is not yet visible in the seed.
Gradually the living knowledge of Nature’s energies was reduced to folklore and the meaning behind the poetic images was slowly forgotten or taken far too literal. Some of the old wisdom survived as superstitions.

In Denmark and Germany, the spirit of the Alder tree was said to carry children off to the Otherworld. Goethe’s ballad “The Erl-konig” (The Alder King), set so beautifully to music by Schubert, is a famous example of this belief. A father rides on a horse through the woods with his ailing child in his arms. The child says: “My Father, my Father, can you not hear it? It is the Alder King, who is speaking, calling me!”
The Father tries to reassure the child, but at the end of the journey (and the song) it lies dead in his arms.

We shall come across this theme of life taking life in order to renew itself countless times in our exploration of the spirit of the trees. No doubt, the Alder tree has to gain its territory from the other Earth children, that grew in its place before. It has to ‘feed’ on ‘other’ energies, such as the minerals, the water, the air, the sunlight in order to create itself. But we must not forget that, in turn, it will ‘sacrifice’ its own life too.

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Alder integrates the dark side

As time went by the old reverence for Alder was often forgotten and some said there was evil lurking in the tree. The fact that Alder was grown commercially for the gunpowder industry at one time, the heavy shade given by the dark leaves in a damp Alder grove in the summer and the haunting appearance of its dark lively limbs reaching up to the winter sky, its old associations with the Fairy King, the Raven and the Blacksmith, must all have contributed to the hunch that there is a dark, scary, heavy side to the Alder spirit. This feeling resonates to the dark boggy marshlands and stagnant emotions deep within ourselves, which we fear to face.
If we fail to transform the mass of old hurts, resentments and sourness gathered there, life becomes a weary struggle of just plodding along, for then we have no springy fertile foundations, only emotional marsh-lands, that suck us in with every new step we take. This could indeed be experienced as ‘evil’, if it went on long enough!
The blessing of the Alder spirit is that it works unceasingly to integrate and balance water and fire, air and earth, until it transforms the imbalance into fertile, stable soil.
This labour of love was likened by the old myth makers to the toil of the Blacksmith. In order to fully appreciate why the Alder was thought to be expressive of the spirit of the Blacksmith, we have to make a short exploration into the history of the' smith energy.

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Alder and the Divine Blacksmith

Before the industrial revolution, the Black-smith was a very important figure in society. Even longer ago, his craft of melting iron ore and making tools, utensils and weapons was considered sacred. In the Indian Rigveda, the creator of the world was a blacksmith.
In mythology, we also often find a Divine blacksmith as the son of the Great Mother Goddess. Hepheastos, son of Hera and husband to Aphrodite, Goddess of Love is an example. Hephaestos was lame, which emphasized his role as a vegetation God (trees can’t walk) and in this respect his energy is very similar to that of The King of the Fairies being an exquisite craftsman, who transform the minerals of the earth into the jewels, tools, weapons and armoury of life.
He was also the energy of the Volcano, as his Roman name Vulcan indicates.

When the earth was young the immense heat in the interior drove oxygen and hydrogen atoms, thus far locked up in the molten rock, out to the surface with the great streams of lava. The newly formed molecules were released as massive clouds of water vapour, which on cooling formed the seas. Thus rocks and fire created our oceans! According to current scientific theory, our Earth condensed out of inter-stellar dust and gas four and a half billion years ago. Its lighter elements floated to the surface and hardened on cooling, forming a crust. It is the heat welling up from within the Earth that still propels the great continents of land and ignites volcanoes. Both the landmass as well as the seas could be said to be floating on the hot inner core of the Earth. Without this upwelling heat and volcanic activity to build hills and mountains, the weather would erode the land and all would gradually sink below sea level. Volcanoes also pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other vital gasses into the atmosphere, even when not erupting. Without these important greenhouse gasses, the Earth would cool and be liable to enter a permanent ice age. Moreover, rainfall continually washes the key elements of life into the seas and oceans, where it is converted by plankton into calcium carbonate and sinks to the sea-bed as chalk. Without the volcanoes replenishing these vital chemicals in the atmosphere, all carbon-based life forms, including plants, animals and human beings would eventually become extinct.

In his role of as the essence of the Volcano, the Divine Blacksmith spews the carbon-dioxide out into the atmosphere. In his role as Vegetation God, he takes it ‘out of the air’ again as the fuel and food for the plants and returns oxygen to the atmosphere.

Thus it becomes clear that the work of the Divine Blacksmith was unceasing toil. His chemistry is at the heart of the process and cycles of life. This chemistry includes all the heat-creating digestive processes, which break things down (and were therefore often experienced by humans with fear), as well as the energy-hungry formative processes. 

The Alder was seen as a spirit endowed with this Blacksmith energy. Alder is the great balancer of water and fire. The black smith works with molten metal, which is an alchemical symbol of the joining of water and fire. Just as the tree transform the solid minerals of the earth, through the medium of liquid (water), into wood and leaves with the help of fire (the sun and digestive processes), so the smith melts the metal ore, which the behaves like a liquid, with the help of fire.

The secret of the Alder’s transforming smith’s fire is locked up deep within its woody limbs and reveals itself to us through the properties of its charcoal. Charcoal is not only almost pure carbon, the food and fuel of organic life, but it is also the substance which was needed, before the use of mined coal, to make a fire hot enough to melt the metal from the ore and to transform the metal, on the smith’s anvil, into objects of beauty and practical use.

It is well known that the metal, which a smith forges, is hardened considerably by immersing the hot glowing object in water, a process called ‘tempering’. Similarly, the strength of Alder timber is enhanced many times over when it is immersed in a wet environment, which is the reason it was used so often as the foundation for buildings in soggy places, where nowadays we would use steel.

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The Alder is associated with the Sun and the Otherworld

The bird associated with Alder is the Black Raven. Just like large white birds, such as the Stork, in folklore are said to bring babies, so the beautiful black Raven carries the soul to the Otherworld and is the messenger of the great void of mystery, which is the home of all that is waiting to take on form. Winged creatures are poetic images of spiritualisation and the Raven as soul-carrier comes from the idea that the soul flies away from the body after death. This connection with the Otherworld, or different dimensions, endows the Raven with psychic abilities. It is a bird of deep intuitive perception and magic. In the stories Raven can talk and has the gift of prophecy. Many ancient Gods are portrayed with a raven as their constant companion. The Celtic Morrigan is a Raven Goddess. She is the deep secret side of the Lady of Avalon, the Apple island, the Celtic name for the Otherworld. Many fear her, but her name gives us a reassuring clue: She is not only the dark night, but she leads us safely into the morning, the dawn.
Morrigan is the female portrayal of the Alder spirit of integration and resurrection. The misty island of the Otherworld is often described as being shielded by Alder groves.

Saturn, Chronos and Bran, which we have mentioned before, due to their connection with the Alder spirit, are also Raven Gods. When the Welsh-British Bran was wounded with a poisoned dart in his heel, he told his companions to cut off his head and bury it in White Hill, London. And so Bran’s head, still talking and singing, was taken to this place, which is where the Tower of London now stands. To this day, his spirit, in the form of the Ravens of the Tower of London, remind us of his presence there. The legend says that no harm would ever come to this island, so long as the head was there.
In the second world war the Ravens of the Tower flew away one night, after a noisy German air raid over London. Winston Churchill, said to be initiated as a Druid in his younger years, ordered an immediate replacement of Ravens to be brought from Wales and Scotland!
The tale is warning us that if the spirit of Alder-Morrigan-Bran is removed from this land, there will be no integration, and thus no balance and that would make us immensely fragile.
Bran's singing head can also be connected to the tops of the Alder tree crown, which are said to sing more musically in the wind than any other tree. One of the Alder's old names is 'whistlewood'. References in ancient literature to Bran's head singing and prophesying may indicate that the tree was used as an oracle. In some parts of the world, such as Japan, people still practice the art of going to 'listen to the wind in the trees' and our Celtic ancestors may have had similar traditions.
Many of us have heard of the legendary Orpheus, from Greek mythology. Like Bran, he may also be associated with the Alder, because the Greek 'orphruoeis' means 'on the river bank', the place where Alders grow.This son of Apollo and the muse Calliope was the archetypal musician who could charm the birds from the trees. His beloved wife Eurydice died from the bite of a snake which she accidentally trod on. Orpheus was inconsolable and, risking his own life, followed her into the Underworld, expressing his love for her, whilst playing his lyre.  He proved that beautiful music is truly immortal, because he moved the hearts not only of the ghosts and tortured spirits, but also of Hades and Persephone, God and Goddess of the Underworld. They consented that Eurydice could follow him back to the world of the living, on condition that Orpheus would not turn to look at her until they were back. As Orpheus reached the sunlight he longed so much to see her that he turned round too early, whilst she was still in the shadows and so lost her for ever. The wretched Orpheus henceforth wandered the earth in utter misery and would no longer worship Dionysus (the wild God of pleasure, joy and wine and inventor of the lyre), and as a result was torn to pieces by the Maenads. The Muses laid his head, still singing and prophesying to rest in a cave.
"Here too, we have the themes of the sun. Orpheus is the son of the sun god, and travels to the underworld and back again as the sun does nightly and, like Bran’s, his severed head continued to prophesy. Prophecy is a gift associated with the sun god, along with music, poetry, and healing." (Anna Frank "Power Plants", a work in progress)

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Tree of Magic and Integration

The Spirit of Alder inspires us to close the gap between our good intentions and our deeds, so we can experience Fairy-magic!
Evaporate your old hurts and stagnant emotions! Know what you are. Pure energy, endless possibilities! Start behaving as if you are what you want to be! If you are a singer, sing. If you want to be a lover, love with all your heart and the world will sooner or later respond. If you want to be an explorer, why wait till the ‘right’ opportunity arises? Look at the world through the eyes of an explorer and you will find many opportunities there already waiting, which in time will lead to other adventures. If you want to be happy, act happy, feel happy. Happiness is to do with the state of your own mind and heart, so there’s little point in waiting till someone ‘gives’ it to you.

The Alder month leads as out of the winter and back into a new Spring season once more. This is a time of resurrection and renewed integration.
The Alder in our country is now under serious threat by the new hybrid Phytophthora fungus, as explained above. I pray that we will find ways to keep help to keep this magic tree in our midst.
One way we can all contribute to this struggle is to do whatever we can to stop the accelerating of global warming, which has no doubt contributed greatly to create ideal conditions for the spread of this disease. We can also look again at the way we transport species and goods all over the world. It is not realistic to halt this process all-together, and can sometimes have incalculable benefits. However, the risks are enormous as well. Creating self-sustaining economies and taking immense care are the way forward.

Alder tree, we honour thee!

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