🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Silver birch

Nature · Trees

Silver birch

Deciduous · to 30 m · short-lived, rarely past 100 years

Betula pendula — Betulaceae

A slender, light-demanding pioneer of heaths, commons and poor sandy soils, the silver birch is one of the first trees to colonise open ground and one of the easiest to name at a glance. Its white peeling bark, drooping twig tips and small triangular leaves are unmistakable. Coleridge called the birch the lady of the woods.

How to know it

Whole tree of Silver birch
Whole tree Ryan Hodnett · CC BY-SA 4.0
Leaf of Silver birch
Leaf Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark · CC BY 2.0
Bark of Silver birch
Bark gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K · CC BY 2.0

How to spot them

  • ▸Papery white bark peeling in horizontal strips, with black diamond-shaped fissures thickening towards the base
  • ▸Slender outer twigs that droop distinctly; twigs hairless but rough with small white warts
  • ▸Small triangular leaves, 3–6 cm, double-toothed and tapering to a point, on a short slender stalk
  • ▸Long yellow male catkins in spring; female catkins break up into tiny winged seeds

How to know it

Papery white bark peeling in horizontal strips, black diamond fissures at the base, and drooping outer twigs

Silver birch — Betula pendula.

Small triangular double-toothed leaves on hairless twigs roughened by tiny white warts

Silver birch. The downy lookalike has hairy, wart-free twigs and rounder leaves.

A light-demanding pioneer of heaths and sandy commons, first in after fire or felling and seldom living a century

Silver birch.

Coleridge called it the lady of the woods; its twigs bound the besom broom and its sap was tapped for wine

Silver birch.

The fly agaric grows in partnership with its roots, and its bark yields the preservative betulin

Silver birch.

Its drooping habit is recorded in the specific epithet, which is Latin for hanging

Silver birch — Betula pendula.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Betula pendula: pendula means 'hanging', for the drooping outer twigs
  • •Downy birch (Betula pubescens) is the lookalike: hairy twigs without warts, rounder leaves, wetter and more northerly ground
  • •A pioneer species — wind-blown seed colonises bare ground quickly, and the tree is short-lived, seldom past 100 years
  • •The fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) forms mycorrhizas with birch, which is why the red-and-white toadstool so often grows beneath it
  • •Birch twigs make the besom broom; birch bark yields betulin and, dry-distilled, birch tar
  • •Birch sap can be tapped in early spring and fermented into wine
  • •Birch is the national tree of Finland, and a folk symbol of renewal across northern Europe
  • •Ötzi the Iceman carried birch-bark containers and pieces of birch polypore fungus

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources