Alternate name: White Birch

Family: Betulaceae, Birch view all from this family

Description One of the most beautiful native trees, with narrow, open crown of slightly drooping to nearly horizontal branches; sometimes a shrub.
Height: 50-70' (15-21 m).
Diameter: 1-2' (0.3-0.6 m).
Leaves: 2-4" (5-10 cm) long, 1 1/2-2" (4-5 cm) wide. Ovate, long-pointed; coarsely and doubly saw-toothed; usually with 5-9 veins on each side. Dull dark green above, light yellow-green and nearly hairless beneath; turning light yellow in autumn.
Bark: chalky to creamy white; smooth, thin, with long horizontal lines; separating into papery strips to reveal orange inner bark; becoming brown, furrowed, and scaly at base; bronze to purplish in varieties.
Twigs: reddish-brown, slender, mostly hairless.
Flowers: tiny; in early spring. Male yellowish, with 2 stamens, many in long drooping catkins near tip of twigs. Female greenish, in short upright catkins back of tip of same twig.
Cones: 1 1/2-2" (4-5 cm); narrowly cylindrical, brownish, hanging on slender stalk; with many 2-winged nutlets; maturing in autumn.

Habitat Moist upland soils and cutover lands; often in nearly pure stands.

Range Transcontinental across North America near northern limit of trees from NW. Alaska east to Labrador, south to New York, and west to Oregon; local south to N. Colorado and W. North Carolina; to 4000' (1219 m), higher in southern mountains.

Discussion Paper Birch is used for specialty products such as ice cream sticks, toothpicks, bobbins, clothespins, spools, broom handles, and toys, as well as pulpwood. Indians made their lightweight birchbark canoes by stretching the stripped bark over frames of Northern White-cedar, sewing it with thread from Tamarack roots, and caulking the seams with pine or Balsam Fir resin. Souvenirs of birch bark should always be from a fallen log, since stripping bark from living trees leaves permanent ugly black scars.