A birch whose twigs and leaf stalks are soft with hairs instead of being hairless and warty
Downy birch — the hairy-twigged one; silver birch has hairless, warty shoots.
Nature · Trees
Downy birch
Native · deciduous, to 30 m · wet heath, moor, bog margins and upland woods
Betula pubescens — Betulaceae
The birch of damper, colder and more northerly ground than its silver cousin, downy birch is a common native tree of Scottish glens, moorland edges and peaty soils. Woodland Trust notes that it grows further north than any other broadleaf tree. It is best told from silver birch by its hairy, wart-free twigs and less papery, browner bark.
How to know it
How to spot them
- ▸Young twigs and leaf stalks covered in soft downy hairs, and without the rough white warts of silver birch
- ▸Bark greyish-white to brown with obvious horizontal grooves, lacking the papery peeling of silver birch
- ▸More upright crown with outer branches that do not weep as strongly as silver birch
- ▸Triangular leaves, more rounded at the base than those of silver birch
- ▸Wetter, higher and more northerly and western ground, including peat bogs and clay
How to know it
Grey-white bark with pronounced horizontal grooves that never really peels into papery strips
Downy birch.
The broadleaf tree that grows further north than any other, thriving on peaty ground and up hillsides
Downy birch, per the Woodland Trust.
Triangular leaves that are rounder at the base than in its hybridising lookalike, on a more upright, less weeping tree
Downy birch (Betula pubescens).
Its male catkins, brownish-yellow and hanging in twos to fours at the shoot tips, are likened to lambs' tails
Downy birch.
Two birches hybridise freely; this is the one of damper, cooler soils whose Latin epithet means becoming hairy
Downy birch — pubescens means downy or hairy.
Quick-fire facts
- •Betula pubescens: pubescens means becoming downy, for the hairy young shoots
- •Silver birch (B. pendula) and downy birch hybridise, which can make individual trees hard to name
- •Downy birch tolerates wetter soils than silver birch, including peat bogs and clay, and ranges further north and west and to higher elevations
- •Woodland Trust: it can grow further north than any other broadleaf tree
- •Birch woods support more than 300 insect species according to the Woodland Trust, and fungi such as fly agaric, birch polypore (razor strop) and woolly milk cap
- •Caterpillars of moths including Kentish glory, angle-shades and buff-tip feed on the leaves; siskins, redpolls and greenfinches eat the seed
- •Birch symbolised renewal and purification in Celtic tradition, and bundles of twigs were used to drive out the old year
- •Planted birch seems more prone to birch dieback than naturally regenerated birch (Woodland Trust)
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Downy birch (Betula pubescens)