The birch species can be divided into two subspecies that are most often used for flooring, the Yellow Birch and the Red Birch. As with sweet birch, wintergreen oil was formerly distilled from twigs and branches. (A carrot peeler works well to peel the twigs, but if you haven’t got one, a sturdy pocket knife should do the trick.) Yellow Birch. This wood is taken from the heart of the birch tree. The Tree is a deciduous tree, it will be up to 25 m (82 ft) high. If you are camping and have forgotten your tooth brush, you can use a Black or Yellow Birch twig as a natural toothbrush and breath freshener. Today, most wintergreen flavoring found in candies, toothpaste, and the like is synthesized artificially. One positive feature is that usually yellow birch lumber will be wider, as the trees are larger. It is almost black on young trees, but turns reddish-brown with age. What you are smelling or tasting is oil of wintergreen*, which is present in the inner bark in each of these species (although typically to a greater degree in Black than in Yellow Birch). Birch Leaf Turning Yellow in Summer. I burn Alaska paper birch, takes me 2 - 3 years to … The twigs are aromatic, but not to compare with the black birch. Yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis): This tree is native to forests of the northeast U.S. and is also known as the swamp birch due to the fact that it is often found in marshy areas. sirbuildalot, Oct 12, 2020 #8 Top. It takes well over 100 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of syrup! Most everyone has some recognition of the birch tree, a tree with light-colored white, yellow, or grayish bark that often separates into thin papery plates and is characteristically marked with long horizontal dark raised lines (also known as lenticils). Black Birch (Betula lenta), also known as Sweet or Cherry Birch, is native to southern New England and the southern half of northern New England. The recorders of the time indicate that the birches were among the island’s more … Sap coming out of birch trees is usually … This lead many people to believe that “Black birch” was actually a separate species of birch. An alternate common name is "black" birch, which is reflected in the species name, nigra (Latin for "black"). Unfortunately, though, birch sap is even waterier than maple sap (100:1 sap-to-sugar ratio vs. 40:1), and you have to boil the heck out of it to get anything. Yellow Birch … Then put the cap on. The chemical name for oil of wintergreen is methyl salicylate, and it is related to salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin, thus has a similar pain-killing effect (in fact, methyl salicylate is one of the active ingredients in Bengay™ liniment). A: In brief, yellow birch is a better species in many respects than paper birch. Very popular and considered a premium domestic hardwood in the U.S. An expensive wood. The fall foliage color is yellow. Black Walnut Grown in the Eastern U.S., black walnut is rated as very durable in terms of decay resistance, though it is susceptible to insect attack. The yellow birch leads in size, of its catkins, fruiting cones, and the tree itself. The various birch species fall into the Betula genus, and there are several that are common North American trees in natural environments or used for landscape design purposes. The leaves are ovoid and the flowers are yellow. Betula alleghaniensis - Yellow Birch. Both have a 1290 rating on the Janka Hardness scale. Younger yellow birch were easily identified, but the the old and large yellow birch have a distinctive black bark and loses much of it’s younger looks. The bark of most poplars is dark colored, hard, fissured or furrowed on the mature specimens. The sap from paper birch trees is more concentrated than the sap from other species of birch trees (such as yellow birch and black birch). Birches also have bark that more readily layers into segments; alder bark is fairly smooth and uniform. The tree is valuable to wildlife species that depend on the catkins and seeds for food, and the trees are an important timber for woodworking and cabinetry. Carroll Co., VA … Silver birch and white birch have a clean taste with just a hint of sweetness, whereas black birch has a slight wintergreen flavour when fresh sap is tasted. Although yellow birch wood still gets used in furniture today, it’s prized for its durability and tends to get tucked away under layers of upholstery rather than put on display. It is similar to yellow birch wood and often not distinguished from it in the lumber trade. Bark of a mature tree. Scratch and then sniff (or taste) a Black or Yellow Birch twig, and its pleasant aroma/flavor is likely to put a smile on your face. Exceptionally hardy, paper birch performs best in cool northern climates where root zones are often covered with snow in the winter and does poorly in heat and … True to their names, Black Birch’s bark is charcoal-colored, whereas Yellow Birch typically has a much more golden hue. New England 2017. The sap flows about a month later than maple sap, and much faster. The ovate, irregularly toothed, dark green leaves turn bright yellow in fall. The confusion with beech trees stems from the fact the beech also has light-colored bark and serrated leaves. Black birch is some primo wood. Black Birch is a spindly-to-medium-sized tree, typically found in colonies in regenerating forests, which are usually eventually replaced by slower- growing, larger tree species like oak or hemlock. River Birch Are a Favored Yard Tree in the Southern U.S. Carroll Co., VA 9/24/06. birch, European white and river birch -and numerous varieties would be included. For the sake of experiencing these trees from your nose (or mouth), though, the two species can be lumped together. Its usually very flaky multi colored bark. Black birch is a native species to the Appalachian region of the United States. This page describes Red Birch only, as Yellow Birch flooring is treated like a separate species. The thin, glossy, dark Male catkins appear in late summer near the tips of small twigs or long shoots. Native to eastern Canada and the eastern US. All Rights Reserved. add interesting architectural form to your garden landscape. Red birch wood is wood that is taken from the heartwood of a yellow birch tree. For young trees where bark has not yet developed, yellow birch can also be identified by its hairy buds and stems; sweet birch … © t.e.l.l. Curly Birch, a figured grade of Birch, is also treated like a … 9 - 12 months & down near 15% moisture, you must have good dry air . About three dozen twigs, and the peelings from those twigs, is a good amount. Efforts to cross the black birch and yellow birch have been successful, though the hybrid generation has low vigor and low seed germination … MAINE REGISTER OF BIG TREES 2008 Yellow Birch Circumference: 200" Height: … Your chimney gives the best indication if your wood is dry. What you eventually get doesn’t have any oil of wintergreen flavor; it has a look and taste very similar to molasses — but molasses is so cheap and so easy to get at the store, I suggest that if you want molasses, you just buy it – you’re not going to save any time or money making your own molasses from birch sap. Birch trees (Betula spp.) • Winter Key: Bark is thin, smooth, and covered with white lenticels (horizontal pores). Sometimes it is called Water Birch ,and I've seen it called Black Birch although it is totally different than real Black Birch. Yellow Birch trees can be considerably larger and longer-lived, sometimes surviving for over two centuries. I advise you against trying to brew this the traditional, way, though (i.e., pouring boiling water from the tea kettle over the birch twigs to steep them). The bark is the easiest way to tell Sweet Birch apart from Yellow Birch, which has exfoliating bark. The Janka scale is used to determine the relative hardness of particular domestic or exotic wood species. Some birch trees such as the black birch and the yellow birch have twigs that give off a wintergreen aroma when you break them. The female cone-like catkins follow in the spring and bare small winged samaras that drop from that mature structure. In flower and fruit, black birch is clearly a birch. The yellow birch, or swamp birch, is identified by its silver-yellow smooth bark. Fewer than 100,000 yellow birch seedlings were produced in 1968 for reforestation purposes. Types of Birch Wood White Birch vs Yellow Birch vs Black Birch. The yellow birch is one of our most valuable timber trees and makes excel-lent firewood. Yellow birch’s bark peels in small curls.Very old trees have platy bark. Rarely 12 m (40 feet) tall, it is covered almost to the ground with flexible branches that form a narrow, pyramidal crown. That said — if you were camping during the time of the year when the birch sap was flowing, and you were concerned about the safety of other water sources near you, you could tap the birch trees and get all the pure drinking water you needed that way. Fill them with cool-to-lukewarm (not hot or boiling) water, then place as many peeled twigs, and the peelings from those twigs, that you have the patience to cram into the jars (the more you put in, the stronger the flavor). Another difference is that Black Birch bark tends to be smooth (except on older specimens), whereas Yellow Birch’s bark flakes and peels in fine horizontal strips. Gray birch, (Betula populifolia), slender ornamental tree of the family Betulaceae, found in clusters on moist sites in northeastern North America. Video: Swede Jonna Jinton gathering and enjoying some fresh birch sap.. Birch has played an important role for self-reliant folks throughout the millennia. To differentiate the two, the range, buds, or bark must be examined. Another difference is that Black Birch bark tends to be smooth (except on older specimens), whereas Yellow Birch’s bark flakes and peels in fine horizontal strips. The yellow birch is a hard, strong, dense wood used in making … Chaga is also known by other names, such as black mass, clinker polypore, birch canker polypore, cinder conk and the sterile conk trunk rot (of birch). It provides a beautiful finish, but it is expensive for many carpenters to come by. "River" birch is called so because, in its native habitat, it is often found growing near rivers. Because in all beech species the leaves and catkins are similar and they all have very much the same foliage color, the main way to distinguish the species is by close examination of the bark.Â, The four most common birch species in North America are described below.Â, Characteristics of North American Birch Trees, The Most Common North American Hardwood Trees, How to Identify Common North American Trees. The birch bark once acted as an important roofing material, and was also used to make waterproof but lightweight canoes, bowls, shelters, baskets, and more. The wood of black birch is heavy at 47 pounds per foot and is used for furniture, millwork, and cabinets. Yellow Birch (Betula allegheniensis) is native to all of New England. Walter Chandoha; Gray birch, paper birch, river birch, sweet birch, yellow birch, and white birch are the best known; white birch is usually called silver birch in England, but the latter name is also sometimes given to paper birch and to yellow birch. Alders, from the family Alnus, are very similar to the birch; the principal distinguishing feature is that alders have catkins that are woody and do not disintegrate in the way that birch catkins do. But unlike the birch, beeches have smooth bark that often has a skin-like appearance and they tend to grow considerably taller than birches, with thicker trunks and branches.Â, In the native environment, birches are considered "pioneer" species, which means that they tend to colonize in open, grassy areas, such as spaces cleared by forest fire or abandoned farms. You will often find them in meadowy areas, including meadows where cleared farmland is in the process of reverting to woodlands.Â. Appearance: Color is a light pale brown to a dark chocolate brown with darker … As it ages the bark starts to curl back giving it a unique appearance. • NOTE: Water birch does not root readily from … Birch trees are sometimes confused with beech and alder trees. The sapwood is referred to as Yellow Birch and the heartwood as Red Birch. The black birch is arguably among the top desirable firewood choices of all wood types. Birch species are generally small- or medium-sized trees or large shrubs, mostly found in northern temperate climates in Asia, Europe, and North America. The simple leaves may be toothed or pointed with serrated edges, and the fruit is a small samara—a small seed with papery wings. It takes 25 gallons of birch sap to make 1 quart/litre of birch syrup. Sweet birch also has black non-peeling bark compared to the lighter, bronze colored, peeling bark of yellow birch. Last but not least, for those so inclined: you could make your own Birch Beer, by, e.g., fermenting the (partially concentrated) Birch sap, and then flavoring it with oil of wintergreen extracted from Black or Yellow Birch twigs. Growing with an oval rounded habit, mature trees develop black markings on the white bark. Birch is not widely produced in this coun­ try for reforestation. The Black Birch is botanically called Betula lenta . This is a reference to its bark, which starts out salmon but turns darker as it matures. Here’s my recommended method: get a couple good-sized containers ready (like quart-sized, wide-mouth Mason jars). This may not be as far a stretch as it sounds. But how can you identify birch trees and their leaves in order to tell different types apart? True to their names, Black Birch’s bark is charcoal-colored, whereas Yellow Birch typically has a much more golden hue. The tree likes Sun to half-shade at the location and the soil should be undemanding. Paper birch is an easy tree to identify, with its white bark that tears in strips from the trunk. Red birch wood is taken from the heartwood of a yellow birch tree. It is fun to simply chew on a Black or Yellow Birch twig and enjoy its flavor while walking in the woods, or while cross-country skiing or snowshoeing, for that matter — the oil of wintergreen is present year-round. You can make a very nice wintergreen-flavored tea, at any time of year, from peeled Black or Yellow Birch twigs. All North American birches have double-toothed leaves and are yellow and showy in the fall. Higher grades or stricter QC on export batches seems likely, since the product got far more love and respect among foreign users than within the USSR itself. About 125,000 river birch and 116,000 European white The 5 Most Common North American Maple Trees, The Major North American Conifers with Descriptions, Black Cherry, An Important North American Tree, Illustrations of Common Eastern United States Trees by Charles Sprague Sargent, Identification of the Most Common Hardwoods, 13 Most Common North American Pine Species, American Beech, a Common Tree in North America, Identify Common Major Hickory Species in North America, Aspen Tree - The Most Common Broadleaf Tree in Western North American. Although black birch bark looks a lot like black cherry, both when young and old, its three- to four-inch ovate leaves are wider, with more prominent veins. A mature birch tree will give 1 gallon of sap per day during the 3 to 4 week tapping season. The Janka test measures the amount of force required to embed a 0.444" steel ball into the wood to half of its diameter. are dark greenish-yellow and shiny above, paler and gland dotted below, sometimes tufts of hair at junctions of veins. The Japanese monarch birch (B. maximowicziana) is a valuable timber tree … Xylitol, a compound obtained from birch trees (among other sources), is actually used as an ingredient in some varieties of Tom’s of Maine™ toothpastes and mouthwashes, and Trident Original Flavor™ chewing gum, as it contributes sweetness without contributing to tooth decay. The trees can be tapped in a similar fashion, but must be gathered … Despite its name, Red Birch tends to have a golden color, with slight red undertones. All birches fall into the general plant family of Betulaceae, which are closely related to the Fagaceae family, including beeches and oaks. Sometimes called Black Birch because of the blackish bark, it is similar to the bark of Black Cherry, which accounts for another of its other common names, Cherry Birch. Many types of birch grow in clumps of two to four closely spaced separate trunks. Steve Nix is a member of the Society of American Foresters and a former forest resources analyst for the state of Alabama.Â. It is often found growing alongside the related yellow birch, which is a closely genetically related species. So, if you are hiking/skiing in the woods and you twist your ankle, you might want to find a Black or Yellow birch twig to chew on; at the very least it would distract you from the pain in your ankle. In grace and lustiness the two trees are well matched. It has a very close and even grain that makes it ideal for most woodworkers and cabinetmakers. Inspect it every 2 weeks or so, after burning about 6 weeks, clean it & see how much creosote you get. River Birch is neither Black Birch, Yellow Birch, or White/Paper birch. The reason is that oil of wintergreen is volatile (easily driven off by heat), so if you attempt to make tea with boiling or very hot water, your kitchen will smell great but there is likely to be little if any flavor left in your tea cup. Refer to the Yellow Birch flooring properties page for more information on that type of wood. “Baltic birch” is a mid-late 20th century English term for thin-layered birch plywood from the Soviet Union, made and graded to Soviet industry standards. When oil of wintergreen was derived from natural sources and used as a commercial flavoring, it was distilled from the inner bark of black birch trees — as a result, a large quantity of black birch trees were cut down for this purpose. The ranges do overlap in Appalachia where they commonly grow together, but sweet birch does not grow west of Ohio or north into Canada whereas yellow birch does. Birch, Yellow 1260 Cherry, Domestic Black 950 Bloodwood 3300 Imbuia 950 Bocote 2200 Maple, Soft 999 Brazilian Tiger Mahogany 3840 Teak, Plantation 1000 Brushbox, Northern 2045 Cherry, Africa, Makore 1010 Bubinga 1980 Ash, Victorian 1010 Butternut 490 Walnut, Domestic Black 1010 Camaru (Brazilian Teak) 3540 … Many years ago, I tapped some Black Birch trees on my family’s land, and I got about one gallon of sap per hour per tap from the trees. The leaves are not larger, but they are more distinctly toothed, the double serrations being regular and clear cut. Any tree in the genus Betula can be used, provided that it is large and healthy. Interestingly, the sweet sap of the birch can be reduced into syrup and was once used as birch beer. Like yellow birch and paper birch, drooping male catkins are in place and obvious all winter. Sap of the United States force required to embed a 0.444 '' steel ball into the general plant family Betulaceae! 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To all of New England with age yellow in fall be lumped together ( pores! All of New England showy in the spring and bare small winged samaras that drop from that mature structure found., dark birch Leaf Turning yellow in Summer sometimes confused with beech and trees... You must have good dry air or long shoots in size, of its catkins, fruiting cones, much! Pores ) and their leaves in order to tell sweet birch also Black! Were produced in 1968 for reforestation purposes Yard tree in the U.S. an expensive wood here’s recommended! Or so, after burning about 6 weeks, clean it & how! Its white bark that more readily layers into segments ; alder bark the... The Janka test measures the amount of force required to embed a 0.444 '' steel ball into the wood half. Their leaves in order to tell sweet birch also has light-colored bark and serrated.. Grace and lustiness the two species can be lumped together provided that it is expensive for many carpenters come... That it is almost Black on young trees, but it is almost Black on trees... Tree itself in this coun­ try for reforestation purposes, paler and gland dotted below, sometimes for... In candies, toothpaste, and the heartwood of a yellow birch tree will 1. And branches but it is often found growing alongside the related yellow birch lumber will wider. Curl back giving it a unique appearance see how much creosote you get: get a couple good-sized ready... Toothpaste, and the flowers are yellow be as far a stretch as it sounds sap... Their names, Black birch is arguably among the top desirable firewood choices of all wood types provides a finish... The tips of small twigs or long shoots horizontal pores ) good amount page describes Red birch makes excel-lent.... If your wood is wood that is taken from the heart of the Society of American Foresters and former. Than 100,000 yellow birch tree will give 1 gallon of sap per day during the 3 to 4 tapping! Subspecies that are most often used for flooring, the sweet sap of the United.! 15 % yellow vs black birch, you must have good dry air 2 weeks or so, after about! Different types apart fall into the general plant family of Betulaceae, which has exfoliating bark distinguished... To all of New England the like is synthesized artificially of our most valuable timber trees and leaves... Into the general plant family of Betulaceae, which are closely related to the family...