Join us on February 10th for an in-depth look at the stunning birch trees of London. From the striking silvery bark of the silver birch to the unique colours of garden varieties, discover the fascinating world of birches that brighten the winter landscape. Learn about the different species, their distinctive features, and the historical uses of birch bark. Don't miss this captivating exploration of one of nature's most versatile and beautiful trees!
Article
Birches
The silvery white barks of birches stand out more than usual at this time of year. There are two similar native birches in London, the silver birch Betula pendula and the downy birch B. pubescens. The former is much more common than the latter, as it is grown in so many gardens and seeds itself so easily. The downy birch is fonder of wetter conditions. Other ways of telling the two apart is that the downy birch has downy twigs and no ‘black diamonds’ on its bark, whereas the silver birch is hairless but does have a tendency for the darker patches referred to as ‘black diamonds’. A hybrid of the two B. pendula x pubescens can be found in Wanstead Park.
Garden birches are fashionable and come in a wide variety of trunk colours e.g. shiny orange-brown B. albo-sinensis septentrionalis, amber B. lutea, yellow B. alleghaniensis, pink B. maximowicziana, red B. grossa and purple B. papyrifera humilis. Any of these trees can produce other colours as well. The most familiar birches we see are the cream and white ones. Creamy coloured barks are found on B. platyphylla szechuanica, and B x fetisowi.
White-barked birches are much more in demand in London’s gardens, parks and streets. Most of these are clones of the Himalayan birch B. utilis some of which are quite ghostly in appearance. One that gets a lot of attention is B. utilis var jacquemontia Silver Shadow, a fine specimen of which can be seen at Wisley.
More unusual birches are those with shaggy black barks, such as B. nigra and those which are scented such as B. grossa and B. lenta. Two rare birches worth looking out for are the pink and red barked B. albosinensis and the yellow-barked B. alleghaniensis. Both of these can be found in Cannizaro Park and also in among a much wider collection at Wisley.
Birch trees have had many uses over the centuries. Apart from the well-known ones such as using the bark to write on or making canoes out of the trunks, there are many others. Wattle, bobbins, thatch, brooms and even herring barrels have all been made from birch. In one species, the cambium (which is the actively growing tissue just underneath the bark), was cut into pasta-like strips and even eaten.
A medicine was made from birch leaves which was thought to promote the production of urine and sweat, both of which at one time were thought to be toxic. Birch sap can also be made into wine. Some trees produce an oil with a most unusual and pleasant scent, which was called ‘Russian leather’. This scented oil was rubbed into leather to increase its durability and was called ‘Russian’ leather as the best oil was thought to come from Russia. Even Neolithic man chose to wrap his corpses in birch bark prior to burying them.
