silver birch

Betula pendula

• Slender deciduous tree
   
• Up to 30m tall
   
• Smooth, silvery-white bark that develops deep, dark fissures with age
   
• Oval leaves have double-toothed serrations along edges and neither leaf stems nor leaves are hairy (that’s downy birch).
   
• Male catkins are long, drooping and yellow
   
• Female catkins are slender, green and are upright when flowering, drooping in fruit
   
• Leaves turn yellow and then golden in autumn

The gherkin-shaped fruiting catkins turn brown in winter and, helped by birds, release tiny winged nutlets
 

Where found

Light sandy soils in woodland, heath and moor, also colonises wasteland.
 

When to look for

• March/April for leaves and catkins
   
• Leaves drop in November

Did you know?

• The poet S T Coleridge referred to the silver birch as the 'Lady of the woods'
  
  
• Silver birch is a genuine native tree, having colonised the UK at the end of the last Ice Age
  
  
• Primroses, violets, wood anemones, bluebells and wood sorrel grow in birch woods
  
  
• Birch leaf tea was traditionally used as a remedy for gout
  
  
• The beautiful fly agaric often grows in association with silver birch