508 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



and is said to make a handsome tree 

 when grown in good sunlight without 

 much competition. As it never can 

 have the handsome, glossy cherry-like 

 l)ark of the black birch, there is little 

 reason for preferring it to the latter, 

 more especially as it requires a quite 

 wet soil and cannot stand long, hot 

 summers. 



CANOE OR WHITE BIRCH 



Undoubtedly the most historic of our 

 birches is the canoe or white birch, the 

 tree which opened up this continent to 

 civilization, for the canoes of its bark 

 gave the voyageur and frontiersmen 

 their only means of wilderness travel 

 until the ice formed on the waterways. 

 It is an exceedingly handsome tree, pure 

 white in its bark, not to be confounded 

 with the eastern gray birch, which has 

 black triangles on the bark under each 

 branch joint with the main trunk. 

 Grows in gravelly or granite base soils 

 not too wet ; cannot stand the hot sum- 

 mers of localities south of the Massa- 

 chusetts line except in mountainous 

 districts such as eastern Pennsylvania, 

 where the altitude gives needful cool- 

 ness. 



THE GRAY BIRCH 



The gray birch is perhaps the most 

 popular of our native birches for forest 

 estate landscape gardening. Nearly as 

 wdiite as the canoe birch, when young it 

 will deceive you mightily as it hardly 

 shows a sign of white anywhere and is 

 only identified by its characteristic 

 notched birch leaf with a very long 

 point on the leaf. Easily confounded 

 with the poplar when young, but the 



greenish bark of the latter is its sure 

 identification whereas the young gray 

 birch twigs are brown. The bark will 

 not peel easily nor separate into layers 

 like its cousin the canoe birch, and un- 

 derneath the inner bark is dark green. 

 Will grow anywhere, wet or dry soils ; 

 sand, clay, limestone or granite base, 

 and can be introduced anywhere in our 

 area, in spite of the fact that its dis- 

 tribution is entirely along our Atlantic 

 seaboard. This fact is, I believe, due 

 to the gray birch being a wing seeder 

 so that the prevailing westerly breezes 

 in the fall when its seeds come ripe 

 have made its westward progress ex- 

 ceedingly difficult. That and the fact 

 that it cannot endure shade and is easily 

 suppressed by trees with larger and 

 heavier leaves. If properly managed 

 both as to planting and clearing out 

 thickets with the axe, a great deal can 

 be done in an ornamental way with the 

 gray birch. Leaves turn yellow in the 

 fall. 



All the birches are excellent fire- 

 woods, furnishing their own gas from 

 the birch oil, and there is no prettier 

 sight than a log of yellow or black 

 birch in an open fire, its tiny, yellow 

 jets of flame blowing out at every pore. 

 As the timber has a big commercial 

 value in furniture work, a northern 

 owner with a big hardwood stand of 

 yellow birch has a valuable asset. 

 Where the soil is favorable and black 

 birch is already abundant, it would be 

 well for a Middle-State owner to 

 encourage a stand of black birch by 

 natural seeding and judicious clearance 

 with the axe. 



(to be continued.) 



ili«r'~^"--- rtM 



