Birch, Silver
The Silver birch, is a striking broadleaved deciduous tree, that can grow to a height of 30m, and may live for 150 years, although 60 to 90 years may be more typical.
Forming a light canopy with elegant drooping branches. The silver-white bark sheds layers like tissue paper and becomes black and rugged at the base. As the trees mature, the bark develops dark, diamond-shaped fissures. Twigs are smooth, and have small dark warts..
Photo supplied by: Alan Payne
Common Name:
Silver Birch
Scentific Name:
Betula pendula
Tree No:
185
Location:
D7
Light green, small and triangular-shaped with a toothed edge, which fade to yellow in autumn.
Credit: Alan Payne
Silver birch is monoecious, meaning both male and female flowers (catkins) are found on the same tree, from April to May. Male catkins are long and yellow-brown in colour, and hang in groups of two to four at the tips of shoots, like lambs’ tails. Female catkins are smaller, short, bright green and erect.
Credit: This could be your image
Once the female flowers have been pollinated by wind, female catkins thicken and change colour to a dark crimson. Masses of tiny seeds are borne in autumn and dispersed by the wind.
Credit: This could be your image
With Scots Pine, Birch is our oldest British native tree, they were the first to spread over the countryside, after the Ice Age. Silver Birch is one of two native birches, the other being Downy Birch. Tolerant of a range of temperatures, it grows as far south as Spain and as far north as Lapland. It thrives in dry woodlands, downs and heaths.
Birch bark is incredibly resilient – pieces of it hundreds of years old have been found intact in peat bogs.
Birch woods (which may include downy or silver birch, or both) have a light, open canopy, providing the perfect conditions for grasses, mosses, wood anemones, bluebells, wood sorrel and violets to grow.
Silver birch provides food and habitat for many insect species – the leaves attracting aphids which provide food for ladybirds and other species further up the food chain. The leaves are also food for the caterpillars of many moths. Birch trees are particularly associated with fungi.
Woodpeckers and other hole-nesting birds often nest in the trunk, while the seeds are eaten by siskins, greenfinches and redpolls.
Birch wood is very useful. The American Indians make canoes of it, and the Norwegians made roofs. It is tough and heavy suitable for furniture production. It was used to make hardwearing bobbins, spools and reels for the Lancashire cotton industry. The bark is used for tanning leather. Silver birch wood is of little commercial value in Britain because the trees don’t grow as large as they do in other parts of Europe.
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