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Betula nigra
Also called Black birch, Red birch, Water birch
Betula nigra, the river birch, is a fast-growing deciduous tree from eastern North America that is prized for its peeling salmon-pink to cream bark. It does best in moist soil along streams or in floodplains, though it adapts to drier garden sites once established.
Betula nigra, the black birch, river birch or water birch, is a species of birch native to the Eastern United States from New Hampshire west to southern Minnesota, and south to northern Florida and west to Texas. It is one of the few heat-tolerant birches in a family of mostly cold-weather trees which do not thrive in USDA Zone 6 and up. B. nigra commonly occurs in floodplains and swamps.
While its native habitat is wet ground, it will grow on higher land, and its bark is quite distinctive, making it a favored ornamental tree for landscape use. A number of cultivars with much whiter bark than the normal wild type have been selected for garden planting, including 'Heritage' and 'Dura Heat'; these are notable as the only white-barked birches resistant to the bronze birch borer (Agrilus anxius) in warm areas of the southeastern United States of America.Native Americans used the boiled sap as a sweetener similar to maple syrup, and the inner bark as a survival food. The river birch is not typically used in the commercial lumber industry, due to knotting, but its strong, closely grained wood is sometimes used for local furniture, woodenware, and fuel.
The river birch is often found in low-elevation regions from as north as New Hampshire to as south as northern Florida. It can be found extending west to Kansas and east to the coast where proper habitat conditions occur. As its name depicts, this birch is found along stream-sides. It can also be a prominent species found in forested wetland communities and in areas containing moist soil, such as floodplains. States include: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Betula utilis subsp. albosinensis · Yellow birch · Erman's Birch · Betula gmelinii · Sweet birch · Monarch birch · Medwediew's Birch · Paper birch · Curly birch · Silver Birch · Downy Birch · Bakdal Birch
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Betula nigra by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
