170C ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



Though the birch may be propagated by layers, and even by cuttings, yet 

 plants are not readily produced otherwise than by seed ; and those of certain 

 varieties, which are procured from layers, or by inarching, never appear to 

 grow with the same vigour as seedlings. Birch seed ripens in September and 

 October ; and may be either gathered and sown immediately, or preserved in 

 a dry loft, and sown in spring. Sang directs particular attention to be paid 

 to gathering the seeds only from weeping trees; and this we know to be the 

 directions given to the collectors employed by the nurserymen in the north 

 of Scotland. If the seeds are to be sown immediately, the catkins may be 

 gathered wet ; but, if they are to be kept till spring, they ought not to be 

 gathered except when quite dry; and every day's gathering should be carried 

 to a dry loft and spread out thinly, as they are very apt to heat when kept 

 in sacks, or laid up in heaps. The seeds should be sown in very fine, light, 

 rich soil, in beds of the usual width, and very slightly covered. Boutcher 

 says : " Sow the seeds and clap them into the ground with the back of the 

 spade, without any earth spread over them, and throw a little peas haulm over 

 the beds for three or four weeks, till the seeds begin to vegetate. The peas 

 haulm will keep the ground moist, exclude frost, and prevent the birds from 

 destroying the seeds." (Treat, on Forest Trees, p. 113.) "It is scarcely 

 possible," Sang observes, " to cover birch seeds too little, if they be covered 

 at all." The plants, if sown in autumn, will come up in the March or April 

 following. If sown in spring, they will come up in May or June ; which, in 

 very cold climates, is a preferable season. If any danger is apprehended from 

 moisture in the soil during winter, the alleys between the beds may be 

 deepened, so as to act as drains. In the nursery lines, the plants require very 

 little pruning, and their after-care, when in plantations, is equally simple. 



Wherever the birch abounds in woods or coppices, a great many seedling 

 plants spring up ; and these in various parts of England, are collected by the 

 country people, and sold to the nurserymen. This is, indeed, the mode by 

 which young trees and hedge plants of every kind were obtained before the 

 establishment of commercial nurseries. Young birch plants which have been 

 pulled out of coppice woods, when about two years old, we are informed by 

 Messrs. Young and Penny, of the Milford Nursery, who adopt the practice 

 extensively, " are found to root much better than seedlings of the same age 

 and size taken out of a regular seed-bed; doubtless because, in the latter 

 case, a greater proportion of the taproot requires to be cut off. In the case 

 of the young birches pulled out of the copses, the taproot, which could not 

 get far down into the hard soil, has its substance in a more concentrated form, 

 and is more branching; hence, little requires to be cut off it, except the ragged 

 rootlets, or fibres ; and it may be considered as acting as a bulb to the upper 

 part of the plant. The tops of these seedling birches are shortened before 

 planting ; and the plants, Mr. Young informs us, make as much wood in one 

 year as regular nursery-reared birch seedlings will in two. It is found in this 

 part of the country, that the downy-leaved black-barked seedling birches 

 (B. a. pubescens) stole much more freely, when cut down as coppice-wood, 

 than the smooth-leaved white-barked weeping variety (B. a. pendula). (See 

 Gard. Mag., vol. xi. p. 506.) It appears from Boutcher, that this mode of 

 obtaining young birch trees, was formerly practised in Scotland. 



In France and Germany, plantations of birch are frequently made by sowing 

 the seed where the trees are intended finally to remain. For this purpose 

 the poorest soils are harrowed in humid weather, in the month of October, or 

 of November, and 15 Ib. of seed, as it is taken from the catkins along with 

 the scales, is sown on an acre, and afterwards covered with a bush harrow. 

 Where the ground is under corn, the seed is sown with the last corn crop, as 

 clover is in England ; and, where it abounds with weeds and bushes, these are 

 set fire to, early in the autumn, and the seed sown as soon afterwards as it is 

 gathered from the trees. It is observed by Michaux, that burnt soil is pecu- 

 liarly favourable to the growth of the birch, which in America reappears, 

 as if by enchantment, in forests that have been burnt down. 



Accidents, Insects, and Diseases. Pallas observes that, in some parts of 



