Vv. 1. THE BLACK BIRCH. 203 
foliage, and the graceful sweep of their limbs, than the birches. 
From the delicate and slender gray birch, throwing its thin 
leaves and often pensile spray lightly on the air, to the broad- 
headed black birch, with its rich, glossy and abundant foliage, 
weighing its pendulous branches almost to the ground,—no fam- 
ily affords such a variety of aspect. There are five birches in 
Massachusetts which are trees, besides one which is a shrub. 
They are thus distinguished :— 
1. The Black Birch, by having its bark dark colored ; 
2. The Yellow Birch,—bark yellowish, with a silvery lustre ; 
3. The Red Birch,—bark reddish or chocolate-colored, very 
much broken and ragged ; 
4. The Canoe Birch,—bark white, with a pearly lustre; 
5. The Gray or White Birch,—bark white, chalky, dotted 
with black; 
6. The Dwarf or Shrub Birch,—bark covered with glandular 
points, a shrub. 
Michaux arranged the birches in two sections: one compre- 
hending trees whose fertile aments are sessile and erect; the 
Black, the Yellow, the Red, and the Glandular, birches; the 
other, those whose fertile aments are stalked and pendulous, the 
Canoe, the White, and the common European. The division 
seems a very natural one, bringing together those which are 
most nearly allied in habit, and in the qualities of their wood. 
Sp. 1. Tue Brack Bircs. Sweet Breen. B. lenia. Linn. 
Figured in Michaux, Sylva, Il, Plate 74. 
The black birch is easily distinguished by the dark color of 
its bark; and from this obtains the name by which it is almost 
universally known. From its resemblance, in bark and leaves, 
to a cherry tree, it is also sometimes called the cherry birch; 
and from the agreeable spicy odor and taste of the leaves and 
inner bark, it often has the name of the sweet birch, or fragrant 
birch, as in Bryant’s lines on the murdered 'Traveller,— 
“The fragrant birch above him hung her tassels in the sky, 
And many a vernal blossom sprung and nodded careless by.” 
