The Birches 



the European white birch. It is not a large tree, and the woods- 

 man scorned it, until the manufacturer of wood pulp, shoe pegs 

 and spools sent forth a demand for it. Now the owner looks with 

 satisfaction upon the graceful, bending birches that bow to each 

 other in the swamps along the streams, over abandoned fields 

 and deforested mountain sides. The harvest is his in due season. 

 This threatened doom of the white birch casts no warning shadow 

 across these sunny, thick-set acres. The trees are all young 

 together, and no matter how scant a living the sterile soil yields, 

 these gypsy trees never seem to languish. Their silken ribbons of 

 dirty white bark are flaunted gaily against the sombre back- 

 ground of evergreens, and they "lean out over the stream," as 

 Doctor Van Dyke puts it, "Narcissus-like, as if to see their own 

 beauty in the moving mirror." Life is short — but it is care free 

 and joyous. 



There is a philosophy in the lives of these vagabond birches 

 we may well ponder upon. Do they not clothe with beauty the 

 most uninviting places? Do they not come again, after a general 

 slaughter, promptly and abundantly, from stump and from 

 scattered seed? A noble persistence and patience under adverse 

 conditions is revealed for our contemplation in the parable of the 

 white birch. 



Canoe Birch, Paper Birch {Betula papyrijera, Marsh.) — 

 Large tree, 60 to 80 feet high, with few erect, large limbs and 

 numerous horizontal branches with flexible twigs, forming a 

 broad, open head. Bark dull, chalky white, when exposed to the 

 sun, stripping horizontally into thin sheets, with frayed edges; 

 chalk rubs off. Wood light brown, reddish, light, hard, tough, 

 close grained. Duds resinous, dark brown, sharp pointed. 

 Leaves 2 to 3 inches long, ovate, abruptly pointed, finely and 

 irregularly serrate, thick, dull, dark green, with paler lining, 

 yellow in autumn; midrib raised and marked with black dots; 

 petioles grooved, downy, slender. Flowers monoecious, April, 

 before leaves; staminate catkins, 3 to 4 inches long, pendulous, 

 clustered or paired; pistillate catkins, i to i^- inches long, on 

 stalks I inch long; scales tapering; pistils red. Fruit slender 

 cones \h inches long, cylindrical, stalked; scales smooth, 3-lobed, 

 two outer points smaller than middle one; seed oval, with broad 

 wings. Preferred habitat, river banks and rich slopes of mountains. 

 Distribution, Labrador to Alaskan coast; south to Long Island, 



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