THE BIRCHES, HOP HORNBEAM, AND HORNBEAM
Family Betulaceæ
The birches are a family of exceedingly graceful and attractive trees,
and charm us quite as much in winter by the color of their stems and
the delicacy of their twigs, as they do in summer by the fresh green of
their foliage. Like other trees, birches vary in appearance according
to the place where they grow. If they are shaded by other trees in the
woods their trunks are tapering and tall and free from branches, but
when they grow in open fields and the lateral branches develop, their
general outline is bushy and far less attractive; unlike other trees,
birches are improved by not having full development.
The birch has been known from the earliest ages, and it is found in
Europe, Asia, and North America.
There are distinguishing characteristics in the details of buds and
stems, but the color and texture of the bark on the trunk and branches
of the different species are the most obvious and certain means of
identification in winter.
There are in all six native species in New England, and one from Europe
which is planted in our parks and gardens.
[Sidenote: Canoe, Paper or White Birch
_Betula papyrifera_]
_A large, graceful tree, 60 to 75 feet high, with wonderfully white
bark splitting into thin, tough layers. Branches thicker, buds larger,
catkins larger than those of other birches, and the upper part of the
twigs is hairy. The buds are sticky and greener inside than those of
other birches,—less silvery and soft. The leaf-scars are alternate._
[Illustration: GRAY BIRCHES
_Betula populifolia_
Page 62
]
In winter, as at every other season of the year, few trees surpass
the canoe birch for beauty and delicacy. No other tree has a bark so
shiningly white, and even the snow is unable to dim its purity. We
usually think of this tree as being fragile and delicate, especially
when we recall it as it grows along the edge of woodlands where the
shade of other trees has forced it to grow slender and tall in reaching
for the light. The canoe birch is really a large tree, however, and
often grows to an enormous size among the northern hills where it
seems to thrive best. The feminine characteristics associated with this
tree in our minds—“Most beautiful of forest trees, the Lady of the
Woods,” etc.—receive a curious shock when we come suddenly upon a huge
old birch growing in a clearing in the woods, for all the world like a
middle aged and corpulent matron among the younger trees.
The wood of the canoe birch is light, but it is hard and strong. It
is used for making shoe lasts and shoe pegs, spools, wood pulp, and
for fuel. The Indians use it for making sledges, paddles, the frames
of snowshoes, and the handles of hatchets. They also use the bark for
making canoes, wigwams, and baskets, and they make a drink from the sap
of the tree.
The generic name, _Betula_, probably comes from the Celtic name for the
birch, _betu_, or it may possibly have come from the Latin _batuere_,
in reference to the birch rods with which the Roman lictors drove back
the crowds of people. The specific name, _papyrifera_, refers to the
paper-like bark which peels off in thin lateral strips.
This birch is found in the mountains of New England and generally
throughout the Northern and Northwestern States.
[Sidenote: American Gray or White Birch
_Betula populifolia_]
_A small, slender tree, 15 to 30 feet high, with an erect trunk,
It grows in poor soil and is found growing commonly along sandy
roadsides. Several shoots spring from the trunk near the ground. Bark
close fitting, with a chalky white surface. Black triangular spaces
below each branch. The ends of the twigs are very rough to the touch.
Alternate leaf-scars._
This little birch is perhaps the least interesting member of a most
attractive family. It is found commonly growing along the sandy banks
of country roads and in waste, barren places where pitch pines and
blueberry bushes and scrub oaks are found. It is invariably associated
with sterility in our minds, and seems to demand nothing of the soil on
which it grows, adapting itself immediately to its surroundings, and
thriving where other trees would die.
[Illustration: BLACK BIRCH
_Betula lenta_
Page 63
]
Although the bark is white and might be confounded with that of the
canoe birch at first sight, the trees can easily be told apart. The
gray birch has a close-fitting bark which is dirty white in color, with
triangular black blotches under the branches, it is exceedingly chalky
to the touch and never peels off as it grows old, while the bark of
the canoe birch peels off in thin lateral strips, is clear white in
color, and seldom shows any dark blotches on the trunk, The bark of the
recent shoots of the gray birch is rough to the touch, and that of the
canoe birch is smooth and sticky where the buds join the stem.
Its wood is soft, light, and neither strong nor durable. It is used for
wood pulp, shoe pegs, spools, barrels, and for fuel.
The specific name, _populifolia_ (poplar-leaved), refers to the leaves
which quiver in the wind and show light under surfaces like the aspens.
The gray birch is found throughout the Northeastern States.
[Sidenote: Black or Sweet Birch
_Betula lenta_]
_A tall, round-headed tree. The branches twist in different directions,
but are pendulous and graceful. The young shoots are brown, dotted with
white, and smooth. The bark is smooth, dark brown, and resembles that
of the garden cherry. The buds are conical and pointed. The twigs have
an aromatic taste. Alternate leaf-scars._
Few trees deserve greater appreciation than the black birch and few
receive as little from people in general. It is always beautiful, but
in winter when the smooth golden brown stems are bare and the sun
strikes it squarely, it glows to the tip of the smallest branch with a
wealth of radiant, living color.
The black birch is easily distinguished by the dark color of its bark,
which is smooth on young trees and cracks into rough square plates on
old trees, but which never peels off in strips. Its gray stems have a
sweet, spicy taste, which is also a means of identifying the tree.
The wood is heavy, strong, and hard, and its surface after being
polished is like satin. It is much sought after for furniture and is
excellent for fuel. An oil made from the wood is used medicinally and
as a flavoring extract, and a sweet beer is made by fermenting the
sugary sap.
The specific name, _lenta_ (pliant), refers to the flexible stems
and branches of this tree. The black birch is found in rich woods
throughout the Northeastern States.
[Sidenote: Yellow Birch
_Betula lutea_]
_A beautiful straight tree, 50 to 90 feet high. Distinguished from the
black birch by its yellowish or silver-gray bark, which, unlike the
brown bark of the black birch rolls back and peels off in thin, filmy
strips from the trunk. The bud scales overlap each other. Alternate
leaf-scars. Delicate twigs with an aromatic taste, not as sweet_ _as
the black birch. The catkins are larger round than those of the black
birch._
[Illustration: YELLOW BIRCH
_Betula lutea_
Page 65
]
This is in every way a worthy sister tree of the black birch, and the
rich yellow of the trunk, but partially revealed through the gray,
shaggy, outer layers of the bark, is quite as beautiful as the rich
red-browns of the black birch bark. Thoreau felt the charm of yellow
birches. In his journal, Jan. 4, 1853, he says: “To what I will call
Yellow Birch Swamp, E. Hubbard’s in the north part of the town, ...
west of the Hunts’ pasture. There are more of these trees in it than
anywhere else in the town that I know. How pleasing to stand near a new
or rare tree; and few are so handsome as this: singularly allied to the
black birch in its sweet checkerberry scent and its form, and to the
canoe birch in its peeling or fringed and tasselled bark. The top is
brush-like, as in the black birch. The bark an exquisite ... delicate
gold color, curled off partly from the trunk with vertical clear or
smooth spaces, as if a plane had been passed up the tree. The sight of
these trees affects me more than California gold. I measured one five
and two-twelfths feet in circumference at six feet from the ground. We
have the silver and the golden birch. This is like a fair flaxen-haired
sister of the dark complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets.
How lustily it takes hold of the swampy soil and braces itself. In the
twilight I went through the swamps, and the yellow birches sent forth a
yellow gleam which each time made my heart beat faster. Sometimes I was
in doubt about a birch whose vest was buttoned, smooth and dark, till I
came nearer and saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a button was
off.”
The yellow birch is one of the most valuable timber trees of the North.
The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and is used for making furniture,
the hubs of wheels, and boxes. Few hard woods of a light color make as
attractive flooring as polished yellow birch.
The specific name, _lutea_ (yellow), refers to the color of the wood
and bark of the trunk. The yellow birch is found throughout the
Northeastern States.
[Sidenote: Red or River Birch
_Betula nigra_]
_A medium-sized tree found on the edges of streams. Long, graceful,
sweeping upper limbs, with small, pendulous lower branches. The bark is
reddish, very shaggy and loose, flaking off and rolling back in thin
strips. Alternate leaf-scars. Twigs reddish brown and pliant._
[Illustration: RED BIRCH
_Betula nigra_
Page 67
]
The red birch is easily distinguished from all the other birches by
its reddish, loosely peeling bark, which gives the trunk an unkempt,
shaggy, and torn appearance. The outer bark separates into flakes which
are loose at one end and adhere to the trunk at the other, and these
projecting strips look like a fringe. The lower branches often bend
down towards the ground in a straggling, irregular fashion, while the
upper branches are free and sweeping. It should not be inferred from
this description that the red birch is lacking in beauty, for it is a
most attractive tree. Its general outline is picturesque, and the soft
red color of the peeling epidermis of the bark in the upper branches
has a very pleasing effect. The red birch is the only semi-aquatic
species among the birches, and its drooping branches hanging over the
water add much to the beauty of our streams and rivers.
Its wood is light but strong, and is used for furniture, wooden ware,
and yokes.
The specific name, _nigra_ (black), was given it by Linnæus,
the celebrated Swedish botanist,—it seems to have no particular
significance.
The red birch is found growing on the banks of the Nashua and Merrimac
Rivers and beside smaller streams in Massachusetts, but it grows more
frequently along river banks in the South than in the North.
A small shrub (_Betula pumila_), the dwarf birch, found in rocky
pastures in Western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and in the South and
West, completes the list of our six native birches.
[Sidenote: European White Birch
_Betula alba_]
_A tree from Europe, extensively cultivated in this country. White,
chalky bark. Long, slender, down-sweeping branches. Small buds.
Alternate leaf-scars._
The slender, drooping branches of the European white birch are so long
and pliant that the slightest breeze sets them swaying in one direction
from the trunk, like a shower of rain driven by the wind. The birch
does not lose its pendulous grace in mere limp dejection, like most of
the weeping varieties of trees that gardeners love to propagate, but
it holds its head high and the slender branches droop down,—a striking
contrast to the weeping willow and other lachrymose specimens of
horticultural art.
There have been constant allusions to this tree in English literature.
Perhaps the most descriptive is one of Sir Walter Scott’s which refers
to the slender, pendulous boughs,—
[Illustration: EUROPEAN WHITE BIRCH
_Betula alba_
Page 69
]
“Where weeps the birch with silver bark
And long dishevelled hair.”
From an artistic point of view much has been said about these trees. In
the “Sylvan Year,” Philip Gilbert Hamerton calls the stem of the birch
“one of the masterpieces of Nature.” “Everything,” he says, “has been
done to heighten its unrivalled brilliance. The horizontal peeling of
the bark, making dark rings at irregular distances, the brown spots,
the dark color of the small twigs, the rough texture near the ground,
and the exquisite silky smoothness of the tight white bands above,
offer exactly that variety of contrast which makes us feel a rare
quality like that smooth whiteness as strongly as we are capable of
feeling it. And amongst the common effects to be seen in all northern
countries, one of the most brilliant is the opposition of birch trunks
in sunshine against the deep blue or purple of a mountain distance in
shadow.”
Miss Jekyll, in “Wood and Garden,” says that the tints of the stem give
a precious lesson in color. “The white of the bark,” she says, “is here
silvery white and there milk white, and sometimes shows the faintest
tinge of rosy flush. Where the bark has not yet peeled off, the stem
is clouded and banded with delicate gray and with the silver-green
of lichen. For about two feet upward from the ground, in the case of
young trees of about seven to nine inches in diameter, the bark is dark
in color, and lies in thick and extremely rugged and upright ridges,
contrasting strongly with the smooth white skin above. Where the two
join, the smooth bark is parted in upright slashes, through which the
dark rough bark seems to swell up, reminding one forcibly of some of
the old fifteenth-century German costumes, where a dark velvet is
arranged to rise in crumpled folds through slashings in white satin.”
The wood is used in Europe for fuel and for making furniture. It
is rather curious to find that the birch has been celebrated as an
instrument of chastisement since early Roman times. Gerard says that in
his time “schoolmasters and parents do terrify their children with rods
made of birch;” and Shenstone, in the “Schoolmistress,” has a pathetic
little account of the fears of small boys as they watched the wind
waving the branches of a birch tree growing by the schoolhouse,—
“For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew,
But their limbs shuddered, and their pulse beat low;
And, as they looked, they found their terror grew,
And shaped it into rods and tingled at the view.”
[Illustration: HOP HORNBEAM
_Ostrya virginiana_
Page 71
]
The European birch is found throughout the North of Europe, and grows
in every kind of soil, both wet and dry,—the Earl of Haddington called
it, with quaint humor, “an amphibious plant,” and after two hundred
years this is still descriptive of its habits.
It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the specific name, _alba_,
alludes to the color of the bark.
[Sidenote: Hop Hornbeam; Ironwood
_Ostrya virginiana_]
_A small, slender tree, 30 to 50 feet high. The bark is light, and
scales off in thin flakes, and is seldom more than a quarter of an inch
thick. Small, acute buds; alternate leaf-scars; delicate twigs. Small
catkins, usually three together, pointing upwards. Hop-like fruit,
often remaining on the tree through the winter._
There is but one native hop hornbeam in New England, and it is an
extremely interesting little tree. It grows under other trees in the
forest, and is easily overlooked, usually being mistaken for a young
elm. Of all trees the hop hornbeam is the most retiring in its habits,
and takes much the same place among trees that the hare does among
animals, or the violet among flowers, living a secluded life in wild
places, where the woods partially conceal its identity.
Its outline against the sky in winter is most delicate and pretty, the
twigs are very slender, and are tipped with the three little pointing
fingers of the catkins, and the whole tree produces a most pleasing
effect. Although the hop hornbeam frequents the woods, it never makes
even a small area its own. It is always found mixed with other trees,
and I have never seen even a little grove of hop hornbeam trees growing
alone.
The wood is very strong, hard, heavy, tough, and durable, and is used
for fence posts, the handles of tools, and small articles.
The generic name, _Ostrya_, comes from the Greek _ostryos_ (a scale),
in reference to the scaly catkins of the fruit. _Virginiana_ is the
specific name for the North American hop hornbeam as distinguished from
the European species, which it closely resembles.
The hop hornbeam is found in rich woods from Nova Scotia to Northern
Florida, and westward to Eastern Kansas.
[Sidenote: Hornbeam; Blue Beech
_Carpinus caroliniana_]
_A tree or tall shrub 10 to 25 feet high. Bark smooth and dark gray,
tough like a horn, and close-fitting. The buds are oval. Delicate
twigs, in flat, spreading layers. Alternate leaf-scars. Fruit in
clusters,—leaf-like bracts, holding little nuts._
[Illustration: HORNBEAMS
_Carpinus caroliniana_
Page 73
]
The hornbeam, like the hop hornbeam, is a small tree and is found
growing under larger trees in the woods. It is readily distinguished
from the hop hornbeam by its smooth, dark bark, the hornlike appearance
of which instantly suggests its name. There is but one native species
in New England, and it is much smaller than its sister tree from Europe
of the same name. The European hornbeam has long been used for making
hedges, and in Germany the hornbeams are planted in such a manner that
every two plants intersect each other in the form of a St. Andrew’s
cross. At the point where the two plants cross each other the bark is
scraped off and the hornbeams are bound together closely with straw.
The two plants grow together in a knot and send out horizontal shoots
in a few years, making an impenetrable hedge. The hornbeam was much
used in formal gardens for labyrinths, arcades, and groves, and as
hedges for geometric designs known as “the star” and “the goose-foot.”
The wood, like that of the hop hornbeam, is hard, heavy, strong, and
close-grained. It is used for small articles, like the handles of tools.
The generic name, _Carpinus_, comes from the Celtic _car_ (wood),
_pinda_ (head), meaning that the wood was used for making the yokes of
cattle. The specific name, _caroliniana_, was used to distinguish the
American from the European species.
The hornbeam is found growing on the banks of streams and in moist
woods throughout New England, and in the South and West.