Alternate name: Ashe Birch, Virginia Birch
Family: Betulaceae, Birch view all from this family
Description Small tree with narrow trunk and many slender spreading branches and twigs.
Height: 15-33' (4.6-10 m).
Diameter: 4" (10 cm).
Leaves: 1 1/2-2 1/2" (4-6 cm) long, 1 1/4-2" (3-5 cm) wide. Nearly round, ovate, or broadly elliptical; blunt or rounded at tip, slightly notched at base; irregularly saw-toothed; with 3-6 veins on each side; short slender hairy stalks. Dark green and hairless except along veins, paler beneath.
Bark: gray; thin, smooth, with horizontal lines; aromatic, with strong odor of wintergreen.
Twigs: brown, slender, hairless.
Flowers: tiny. Male yellowish, with 2 stamens, many in long drooping catkins near tip of twigs. Female greenish, in short upright catkins bank of tip of same twig.
Cones: 1/2" (12 mm) long; elliptical, upright, nearly stalkless; with many dark brown nutlets.
Endangered Status The Virginia Roundleaf Birch is on the U.S. Endangered Species List. It is classified as threatened in Virginia. This is a relatively small, virtually unknown tree species that was first described scientifically in 1914 from a specimen found at 2,800 feet elevation, near Sugar Grove Station, Virginia. It then quickly disappeared from view, not to be seen again until the summer of 1975, when a local biology teacher who had been searching for it found 12 trees and 16 seedlings. The trees were enclosed behind high fences to protect them, yet in 1983 vandals destroyed all but five of the specimens. Thereafter, a small number of these rare birches were planted at secret sites in national forests. By 1994, there were 20 groves of these birches established, with a total of some 1,400 trees, and the Virginia Roundleaf Birch was downlisted from endangered to threatened.
Habitat Very rare; along a stream in understory of mixed hardwood forest.
Range Only in SW. Virginia in Smyth County; at about 2750' (838 m).
