White Birch Trees | White Birch grows in climates ranging from boreal to humid and tolerates wide variations in precipitation. Its northern limit of growth is arctic Canada and Alaska, in boreal spruce woodlands, in mountain and sub alpine forests of the western United States, the Great Plains, and in coniferous - deciduous forests of the Northeast and Great Lakes states.
The tree is particularly shade-intolerant. Where it occurs in old-growth forests, it is restricted to sunny glades and openings. Birches are often the first trees to repopulate logged, disturbed or burned acreage. Where such populations exist, they often crowd out other species, and form pure stands of silvery-white barked trees. In this habit, they are quite like the Black Walnut; walnuts are generally among the first trees sprouting in disturbed places of the woodlots and bottomlands of the American Midwest. Birches grow in almost any soil, but best in deep, well-drained alluvial soils with a sandy component; such soils are common at glacial deposits. It grows on a wide range of soil textures from gravels to silts, and grows on organic bog and peat soils. |
Birch Bark |
| Aboriginal Native Americans used birch bark to make canoes, rattles, torches, many types of containers, and also used it in construction of their dwellings. Lightweight and flexible, the bark could be cut and bent to make containers of any desired shape. Trays, dishes, storage boxes, buckets and cooking pots were made of birch bark. The edges of the container were sewn together with plant fibers. If the edges were sealed with pine pitch or spruce resin, the container could be used to carry water or hung over a fire to cook a soup or stew. Birch bark cutouts or stencils often were used to decorate containers, and also provided patterns for Native American beadwork. The white outer bark layer made a good substitute for the paper that it resembles, and drawings could be made on it with a piece of charcoal. Birch bark burns easily. It was shredded and used for tinder to start campfires, folded and stuck in the cleft of a long pole to illuminate the water depths for night spear fishing, and rolled into cylinders used as long-burning torches. |
Figure 2. Leaves and Bark
| The birches have long been popular ornamental trees in America, chiefly in the northern United States and Canada. Several are native Americans, but many species have been introduced from Europe and Asia. In general, they are graceful trees, the most popular being those with white bark on trunks and larger branches. Some of the others are very serviceable, either because they will grow well in wet soil or because they will exist as well as any other trees, or better, in dry, poor soils. The birch is considered a national tree of Russia, where it used to be worshipped as a goddess during the Green Week in early June.
Birch is used as a food plant by the larvae of a large number of Lepidoptera species, see List of Lepidoptera which feed on Birches. Bark for canoe construction was best gathered during a winter thaw or just when the sap started to flow in the spring. A tree of the desired size, with bark up to nine layers thick, was felled and trimmed, and the bark was cut and stripped off in one piece. The wooden frame of the canoe was of northern white cedar. The birch bark, with the brown, inner layer of the bark turned to the outside, formed the skin. Seams were sewn with split roots of spruce or tamarack, then waterproofed with spruce resin. Birch bark canoes made by northern tribes were traded to tribes from more southern regions, where white birch was scarce, and later to European colonists. Our modern canvas and fiberglass canoes are patterned after the Native American birch bark canoe.
Smaller pieces of birch bark were used in making dwellings called wigwams. Wigwams were of two types. The dome-shaped wigwam had a framework of bent saplings that was covered with overlapping layers of birch bark. |
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