Birch

Birch, the general name for the trees and shrubs forming the genus Betula in the order Betulaceae. The genus includes some 25 species, natives of northern latitudes. They have slender branches; scattered, serrate, deciduous leaves; and catkins both male and female produced on the same tree simultaneously with the leaves. The male catkins fall off whole, whilst the female ones come to pieces, liberating the little winged fruits. In most of the species, as in the common British forms, the bark is marked by long transverse lenticels and flakes off in thin sheets. This renders it a tree suited to smoky towns. Betula alba, our species, seldom exceeds a foot in diameter. It has deltoid leaves on long petioles. It forms extensive forests in Russia and Siberia, and extends far northward and to an altitude of 2,500 feet in the Scottish Highlands. Its wood is used by turners, carriage-builders, and upholsterers, as firewood, and for charcoal; its branches for brooms; its bark for roofing, for making boxes, jars, and shoes, for tanning Russia leather, and even by the Samoyedes as a breadstuff; its leaves by the Finlanders as tea; and its sugary sap, when fermented, as a wine or spirit. B. lenta, the black birch of Canada, reaches a height of 60 or 70 feet, and a diameter of 2 or 3 feet: B.papyracea, the canoe or paper birch of the same country, though becoming stunted beyond the arctic circle, grows in latitude 70° N., and the Himalayan B. Bhojputtra occurs at a height of 9,000 feet.