Learning About Birch Trees
I fell a week or so ago and injured my knee badly. Though the injury dashed my Summer dreams of gardening, hiking, and getting a puppy, it occurred when I focused on contentment and on …focus. It’s inconvenient to have such a challenge. It’s much easier to think about improving oneself than to be in the arena where action is required. However I have continued to try focusing on contentment, and one of the ways I keep myself okay with this delay is that I’m taking advantage of the time I can spend on research. Presently, I’m learning about the native plants on our land. This time: birch trees.
Here is the research I've collected on birch trees:
"BIRCH" IS ALSO KNOWN AS:
Sweet Birch, Black Birch, Cherry Birch, Mahogany Birch, Spice Birch
BIRCH TREES ARE A NUTRIENT ACCUMULATOR OF:
P / Phosphorus (Hemenway)
USES OF BIRCH:
Wood: furniture, millwork, cabinets
Sap: “flows about a month later than maple sap, and much faster. Trees can be trapped similarly but must be gathered about three times more often. Birch sap can be boiled the same as maple sap, but its syrup is stronger (like molasses).” (Little)
Food: the inner bark may be eaten raw as an emergency food. | “It’s similar to cinnamon bark; mother used it in pumpkin pies if she didn’t have cinnamon.” (Bass)
Tea: the twigs and inner bark may be steeped into a tea.
Oil: “was once harvested extensively to produce oil of wintergreen, so the tree was borderline endangered until the ’50s-’60s when synthetic oil of wintergreen appeared.”
Birch is quite a useful tree! I will be continuing to collect research on the uses of harvesting birch. Meanwhile, the trees in our forest will continue to grow.
SOURCES:
Hemenway, Toby. 2009. Gaia’s Garden: a Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. Chelsea Green Publishing. p. 132. | location: my own library
Little, Elbert L. (1980). The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees: Eastern Region. New York: Knopf. p. 366. ISBN-0-394-50760-6. | location: found through Wikipedia’s list of sources on this plant
Bass, A. L. Tommie (the words quoted are his). Crellin, John K., Philpott, Jane (1989). Herbal Medicine Past and Present: Volume II A Reference Guide to Medicinal Plants. Duke University Press. p. 96. | location of source: archive.org
