Birches 275 
A, alnifolia Nutt. (164), Sascatoon Berry, a western species, is smaller, 
beginning to flower when two to three feet high, and is later in bloom- 
ing, otherwise similar to the above. 
A. Astatica Endl. (165) (Japonica), a Japanese species, differs by the 
biight scarlet fruit, which hangs on until leaf fall, and is a stronger 
grower. 
BIRCHES 
Betula. Some thirty-five species, all of northern distribution, large, 
medium, and small trees and some shrubs (B. nana). There are two 
groups distinguishable, which differ very much ornamentally, the white 
or paper birches, and the gray or black birches. The former are small 
trees and comparatively short-lived, characterized by their conspicuous 
white bark, peeling more readily in sheets, and usually with finer foli- 
age than the gray birches, which have a darker, more compact, less 
flaky bark, and a simpler, coarser leaf form. It is the white birches, 
and especially the cut-leaved European variety, which, owing to their 
delicate, graceful foliage, turning golden-yellow, their slender branches 
often with pendent branchlets, and their pure white bark, made Henry 
Ward Beecher call them (after Tennyson) “the ladies among trees.” 
Birches, especially the white ones, are among the most light-needing 
species, and are very rapid, but, with the exception of the yellow birch, 
not persistent growers. ‘They are adaptive, especially the white ones, to 
poor, sandy soils, and to any soils not wet (except the cherry birch). 
Having a tracing root system, they are easily transplanted, but as their 
fibrils are very delicate, this is preferably done in early spring. As 
single specimens for small places or near the house, or in groups along 
watercourses, or on rocky ledges, or grouped with larch and hemlock, 
the conifers of similar grace, they are highly commendable. The white 
bark being very conspicuous, such grouping with more somber surround- 
ings brings best effect. Unfortunately, the white birch, especially the 
cut-leaved variety, suffers from a wood borer, which often becomes 
destructive. 
B. alba Linn. (166), the European Birch (botanically, several species 
of small difference are distinguished), is the handsomest, the most 
graceful of the white birches, to which the above description applies most 
typically, and this, in its natural type, and still more in its cut-leaved 
form, with its pendulous branchlets and gossamer-like tracery: of foli- 
age, is most in use. It should not be confounded with the much less 
