Organic Forest Plants & More

Sweet Birch

Trees and Shrubs

Zones

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Duration: Perennial

Growth Habit: Tree

Mature Size: Height: 50 - 80 ft. Height at 20 years: 15 ft.

Flowers:  April - May

Fruit: mid-August - mid-September

Common alternate names for sweet birch: Black birch, cherry birch, spice birch, river birch, mahogany birch, mountain-mahogany.

Scientific name for sweet birch:  Betula lenta L.

Planting Information:

Sweet birch seedlings develop best during their early years when protected by side shade or light overhead shade. Seedlings require light shade for 2 to 3 months during the first summer.

Sweet birch grows best in moist, well-drained soils.

Colors: Leaves: deciduous, yellow in fall. Flowers: yellow. Fruit: brown. Bark: reddish-brown (older bark is black).

Edible - food uses of sweet birch:

The bark, which contains a volatile oil similar to wintergreen oil, is used for flavoring purposes. The distillation of birch oil is a small industry in the Eastern States.

According to Grieve (1931), Kamschatka natives drink the sap without previous fermentation. In Spring, the inner bark can be cut up into noodle-sized strips and cooked as birch "noodles." Like maple sap, the sap can be used for honey, syrup, or sugar after boiling down. Wood used by cabinet makers. The oil distilled from the wood is insectifugal and can be used to preserve furs. Sweet Birch oil is used as a counter irritant for arthralgia and neuralgia, usually in balms, liniments, and ointments. It is used to impart a wintergreen flavor in such things as baked goods, candies, chewing gums, dairy desserts, gelatins, puddings, and root beer, rarely constituting as much as 0.1% of candy (Leung, 1980). Used in cosmetic shampoos (List and Horhammer, 1969–1979), and in the sugar industry for flavoring and in perfumery. Birch tar oil, distilled from the wood and bark of Betula pendula Roth is used for eczema, psoriasis, and other skin diseases.

A beer is made from birch bark. Fernald et al., (1958) quote an old English recipe for the beer:

Healing medicinal qualities of sweet birch: NA

The bark, which contains a volatile oil similar to wintergreen oil, is also used for medicinal purposes.The distillation of birch oil is a small industry in the Eastern States.

Folk remedies: According to Hartwell (1967–1971), the birch species are used in folk remedies for abdominal and mammary cancers and carcinomas and warts.

Reported to be alterative, anodyne, antiseptic, counterirritant, deobstruent, depurative, diaphoretic, diuretic, parasiticide, pectoral, stomachic, and vulnerary, sweet birch is a folk remedy for burns, chafing, cold, cough, dandruff, dysentery, dysmenorrhea, gout, gravel, lumbago, rheumatism, scalds, sciatica, and sores.

The bark has been used as an astringent, antiseptic, antipyretic, and antirheumatic. Cherokee chewed the leaves for dysentery and used the bark tea for colds, dysentery, milky urine, and stomach ailments. Delaware used the bark decoction as cathartic or emetic. Iroquois used it for colds, fever, soreness, and venereal diseases. Ojibwa used bark as diuretic. In the days of Milspaugh, much of the so-called oil in wintergreen was made instead from young birch, there being little variance between oil of wintergreen and oil of birch.

Other uses for sweet birch:

The wood is also unique. When exposed to air it darkens to a color resembling mahogany and, in times past, was used as an inexpensive substitute for the more valued tropical wood.

Sweet birch wood is quite similar to yellow birch (2). Lumber and veneer of the two species often are not separated in the market, although production of yellow birch far exceeds that of sweet birch. Sweet birch is used for furniture, cabinets, boxes, woodenware, handles, and millwork, such as interior finish and flush doors. Paper pulp made from sweet birch is used in various amounts with other pulps to produce such products as boxboards, book and newsprint paper, paper toweling, and corrugated paper. Birch oil has been produced commercially from sweet birch bark, but its use has declined with the introduction of synthetic products.

Wildlife: NA

General description and characteristics of sweet birch:

Sweet birch (Betula lenta), also commonly referred to as black birch or cherry birch, was at one time the only source of oil of wintergreen. It is the aroma of wintergreen emanating from crushed leaves and broken twigs to which this birch owes its common name, sweet. Its specific name, lenta, is derived from the tough yet flexible twigs that characterize the species.

The sweet-birch tree attains a height of from 50 to 80 feet. The bark of the younger branches is a shiny, reddish brown, while that of the large trunks is very thick and rough. The bark, leaves, and sap of the sweet birch are sweet and aromatic. The tree bears both male and female flowers in catkins which develop with or before the leaves about April or May.

The leaves are oval-to-oblong, 2.5 - 6 in. long, and sharply toothed. Stems of the leaves are hairy. The fruit is oblong, erect, scaly, about 1-1.5 in. long and .5 in. thick.

The tree prefers rich uplands, extending down the Appalachian Mountain chain into northern Georgia and Alabama.

CAUTION: TOXICITY: Very toxic orally, methyl salicylate can be absorbed through the skin, resulting in human fatalities. As little as 4, 700 mg can be fatal in children (Leung, 1980).