Home › Volumes › Trees › How to Know the Trees
Briches — Part 2
The bark again gives the name to a large birch that grows here and there in the forest of the Northern States. The fringed and tattered outer bark, dingy grey with pearly lustre, and showing gleams of gold at every rent, is unlike the other birches. The twigs are aromatic, but not to compare with the black birch. In grace and lustiness the two trees are well matched. The yellow birch leads in size, of its catkins, fruiting cones, and the tree itself. The leaves are not larger, but they are more distinctly toothed, the double serrations being regular and clear cut.
The yellow birch is one of the best of timber trees. The frames of sledges are made of it in the North. An infinite number of small articles employ it. The burs make good mallets; the fantastic arching roots sometimes show curly grain. Often a great yellow birch, shaggy with age, stands long in the woods after it is dead. Such a specimen was lighted on a dark night by a camping party. The flames swept the trunk in a flash, turning the whole tree into a magnificent pillar of fire which consumed it utterly before it had time to fall! So a veracious camper declared. The safety and morals of such a bonfire were evidently not considered by the party. Doubtless this is a common temptation to camping parties in the north woods. It might be quite justifiable if the fire could always be controlled. But here, as elsewhere, playing with fire is dangerous business, and responsible and law-abiding citizens will abstain from it.
Red Birch, River Birch (Betula nigra, Linn.)--Tree 60 to 90 feet high, numerous pendulous branches forming round head; trunk usually dividing into a few main limbs which spread slightly. Bark dark reddish brown, furrowed, with scaly surface; on branches cinnamon red to silvery, curling back in sheets, fringed with tatters throughout. Lenticels prominent. Wood light brown, strong, close grained. Buds chestnut brown, shining, 1/4 inch long, ovate. Leaves alternate, 1 to 3 inches long, oval, pointed, twice saw toothed, thin, tough, shining dark green above, pale yellow-green beneath; dull yellow in autumn; petioles short, flattened, fuzzy, slim. Flowers before leaves, March or April; staminate catkins in threes, 2 to 3 inches long, yellow and brown mottled, pendulous; pistillate catkins 1/3 inch long, erect, green, fuzzy, stalked. Fruit ripe in June, erect, cylindrical cones, 1 to 2 inches long, bracts 3-lobed, hairy, divisions narrow, spreading, central one longest; nut oval, with broad wings, hairy. Preferred habitat, along rivers, ponds and swamps inundated part of the year. Distribution, Massachusetts to Florida, west to Texas, north along Mississippi to Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, eastern Nebraska, and in Ohio. Uses: Desirable ornamental tree; plated in copses to hold stream banks from washing. Wood used for fuel, furniture, ox yokes, shoe lasts, shoes and small woodenwares. Branches make hoops for rice casks.
The red birch earns its name by its bark, which is reddish or chocolate coloured from root to twig. The tree is a tall, graceful fountain of leafy spray; the central stem breaks into two or three divergent limbs that support the pendulous horizontal branchlets. No birch loves the stream borders more ardently than this Southern member of the family. The lustrous leaves do not conceal the flying silken tatters of bark which cover the tree to its leafy twigs the year round. It is foolish to call this tree nigra, for it is not black but red, from top to bottom. It is at its best along the bayous of the lower Mississippi, where its roots and base of trunk are inundated for half the year.
The fruits of the red birch are ripe in June, and the wind, shaking the erect cones, scatters the seeds on the rich land from which the water has subsided. Here they germinate at once, and are rooted, vigorous little seedlings by the time the floods return, able to keep their heads above water, and to thrive like their parents, adding colour and grace of line and motion to the landscapes of many different regions.
It is a surprise to find this, our semi-aquatic and southern-most birch, growing in apparent complacency and comfort in dry, upland soil in the New England States and Minnesota. But so it behaves in cultivation. It well exemplifies the versatility of the family.
Cherry Birch, Sweet Birch, Black Birch (Betula Lenta, Linn.)--Handsome, round-headed tree, 50 to 80 feet high, symmetrical, with slender, often tortuous but graceful limbs, lower ones drooping; twigs delicate, polished. Bark dark brown, broken by furrows into thick irregular plates which show fragments of the smooth, silky bark that covers young limbs. Lenticels prominent as horizontal lines; inner bark aromatic, spicy. Wood dark brown, reddish, heavy, strong, hard, close grained. Buds slender, acute, brown, 1/4 inch long. Leaves ovate, 2 to 6 inches long, pointed, doubly serrate, dull, dark green above, yellow-green below; midrib yellow; veins prominent, straight, downy; petioles short. Flowers before leaves, April; staminate catkins, 3 to 4 inches long, purplish yellow, pendulous; pistillate erect, sessile, 1/2 to 1 inch long; bracts hairy, ovate. Fruit, June, erect cones, sessile, scales broad, of three equal, rounded lobes; nuts with narrow wings, tapering at base. Preferred habitat, fertile soil, moist and well drained. Distribution, Newfoundland to western Ontario; south to Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Kansas. Uses: Occasionally cultivated for shade and ornament; wood used for wheel hubs, furniture and fuel; inner bark yields salicylic acid and wintergreen oil, used in medicine; sap made into birch beer.