River Birch - Betula nigra
Also called Red Birch, this is a small to medium-sized native tree. It has one to several trunks, low-forking limbs forming a broad, rounded crown, and can be thicket forming. The bark is papery, scaly, rust- to salmon-colored, peeling in horizontal strips, revealing creamy or pinkish inner bark. On older trees, the bark is thick, brown to black, very shaggy, platy, or furrowed.
It is the only birch that fruits in the spring.
Leaves are 1 ½ to 3 inches long, ovate to elliptic, with a pointed tip, a broad, pointed base, the margins coarsely double-toothed except near the base, and with 5-12 pairs of veins. They glossy, dark green above, whitish and more or less hairy beneath. The leafstalk is hairy. The autumn color is dull yellow and is short-lasting.
Found on stream banks, swamps, and floodplains to elevations of 1,000 feet, it is found in eastern North America north to New England and the Great Lakes and west to eastern Texas and Oklahoma, but is mostly found in the southeastern United States.
The most wetland-adapted birch and also somewhat drought-tolerant. It is also more heat- and disease-resistant than other birches, though not especially resistant to floods. Plants for erosion control, to revegetate strip-mining sites, and as a landscaping tree in the South.
River Birch - Betula nigra
Also called Red Birch, this is a small to medium-sized native tree. It has one to several trunks, low-forking limbs forming a broad, rounded crown, and can be thicket forming. The bark is papery, scaly, rust- to salmon-colored, peeling in horizontal strips, revealing creamy or pinkish inner bark. On older trees, the bark is thick, brown to black, very shaggy, platy, or furrowed.
It is the only birch that fruits in the spring.
Leaves are 1 ½ to 3 inches long, ovate to elliptic, with a pointed tip, a broad, pointed base, the margins coarsely double-toothed except near the base, and with 5-12 pairs of veins. They glossy, dark green above, whitish and more or less hairy beneath. The leafstalk is hairy. The autumn color is dull yellow and is short-lasting.
Found on stream banks, swamps, and floodplains to elevations of 1,000 feet, it is found in eastern North America north to New England and the Great Lakes and west to eastern Texas and Oklahoma, but is mostly found in the southeastern United States.
The most wetland-adapted birch and also somewhat drought-tolerant. It is also more heat- and disease-resistant than other birches, though not especially resistant to floods. Plants for erosion control, to revegetate strip-mining sites, and as a landscaping tree in the South.