black alder

noun

1. Also called winterberry. a holly, Ilex verticillata, of eastern and midwestern North America, bearing red fruit that remains through early winter.
2. a European alder, Alnus glutinosa, having a dark-gray bark and sticky foliage.

Word History and Origins

Origin of black alder¹

An Americanism dating back to 1795–1805

Example Sentences

Winter floods are also becoming more frequent, with less flooding in spring, causing large areas of floodplain meadows, marshes, old lakes, wet oak and black alder forests to dry out.

From The Guardian

She dusted the shelves packed with jugs and flasks and leather bottles of dragon dung and mouse ears, frog liver and ashes of toad, snail jelly, borage leaves, nettle juice, and the powdered bark of the black alder tree.

From Literature

“I myself use a tea of black alder bark and smut rye to stop excessive bleeding, but I have heard that rubies, either worn on the body or ground to a powder and taken in warm wine, do even better, if the woman is lucky enough to own rubies and rich enough to let them be ground into...”

From Literature

The stem of the black alder arrives at a great size.

From Project Gutenberg

Intermixed is the white cedar, or arbor-vitæ, and some trees of black alder, two or three feet thick, and sixty or seventy in height.

From Project Gutenberg