THE RED BIRCH OR RIVER BIRCH 



THE Red Birch is more happily called the River Birch, for of all the trees that haunt 

 the borders of rivers this is perhaps the most constant. It is an attractive and 

 picturesque tree as it grows singly or in small groups along the banks of a good- 

 sized river, its dark foliage and ragged red bark forming a pleasing spectacle against the 

 glistening water. It is comparatively a Southern species, rarely being found as far north 

 as Canada although extremely abundant along the banks of the Merrimack river in 

 Southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and extending southward along the Atlantic 

 coast to Florida and westward along the Gulf to Texas. It attains its largest size in these 

 southern regions, where no other kind of Birch is found. 



The River Birch is readily identified by the hairiness of the smaller twigs and 

 petioles, and the broadly wedge-shaped bases of the leaves. The margins of the latter are 

 distinctly doubly serrate and their general outline is sub-triangular. The pollen-bearing 

 catkins appear in earliest spring as long festoons from the tips of the more thrifty twigs, 

 two or three of the catkins generally hanging side by side. The seed-bearing catkins are 

 broad and short and stand erect along the sides of the twigs. These develop into ripened 

 seed early in the summer, maturing much in advance of any of the other birches. 



The River Birch is a most valuable tree in landscape gardening. It grows rapidly 

 and is especially useful as well as ornamental along the borders of standing or running 

 water, the situations most congenial to it, and where it serves a useful purpose in holding 

 the soil in place. It is comparatively easy to transplant, and in most regions where it 

 grows wild seedlings may readily be found. The tree seldom attains a very great size 

 except in the Southern States, although in the North it often has a trunk diameter of 

 twelve to fifteen inches. The technical name of this species is Betula nigra, rather an 

 unfortunate specific name for the Red Birch, especially when we consider that there is 

 in the same regions another species popularly called the Black Birch. 



A tree called the Blue Birch is found along the mountains of Northern New Eng- 

 land ; its technical name is Betula carulea. Professor Sargent says it is the American 

 representative of the European Betula pendula. 



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