Photo: Lynk media — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 3 through 8
Harvest calendar
Ripens: Early spring at the thaw — a short 2–3 week sap flow
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Spring sap tapped for syrup, and classically for wintergreen-flavoured birch beer.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–8
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Sap
- Ripens
- Early spring at the thaw — a short 2–3 week sap flow
- Mature size
- Large tree to ~20 m — not containerable
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Eastern North America, from southern Quebec and Ontario south through New England and the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama.
- Status
- Sap
- Years to fruit
- 3–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast while young, slowing with age; can live considerably longer than paper or silver birch, sometimes 150–200+ years on good sites.
- Spacing
- 1200 cm (472 in) apart — about 144 m² (1550 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Ovate to ovate-oblong, 5–15cm long and 4–9cm wide, with an acuminate tip, cordate to rounded base, and sharply doubly-serrate margin; turns golden yellow in fall. Bark is brownish-black, scaly, and cherry-like at maturity, smooth and red-brown with white lenticels when young.
- Root system
- Shallow, spreading root system typical of the genus; sensitive to soil compaction and drought stress.
- Fruit description
- Upright, cylindrical seed catkins (2.5–4cm) that disintegrate at maturity to release small winged nutlets; slender male catkins (7–10cm) persist over winter and shed pollen in spring.
- Propagation
- By seed — cuttings are difficult in this genus. Sow fresh seed in autumn or give it 1–3 months of cold-moist stratification; seed needs light to germinate, so surface-sow or barely cover it.
- Pollination
- Wind-pollinated, monoecious catkins — irrelevant to a sap crop
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Prefers moist, acidic, well-drained loams and tolerates rocky terrain, but is sensitive to soil compaction. No heavy feeding is needed — established trees do best with a leaf-litter mulch rather than fertilizer.
How it spreads. A fast-establishing pioneer that self-seeds readily on disturbed or cleared ground, particularly on cool, moist, north-facing slopes.
Growing tips. Fast-growing while young; does well in full sun to partial shade, with the best fall colour and densest habit in full sun. Twigs, inner bark, and crushed foliage are strongly wintergreen-scented — historically the source of distilled oil of wintergreen (methyl salicylate), which is toxic if ingested in concentrated form. Moderately susceptible to bronze birch borer under stress, plus aphids, birch leafminer, and birch skeletonizer. Like all birches, its shallow roots dislike compacted soil and drought. Tap as for other birches in late winter; sap sugar is low, so a large volume of sap is needed per litre of syrup or birch beer.
Grow journal
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