What a Birch
by Wild Thing
Title
What a Birch
Artist
Wild Thing
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Birch trees are plentiful here. Their leaves get such a stunning gold against the bright blue sky in autumn.
Birch
Birch is a thinleaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus Betula (/ˈbɛtjʊlə/), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams, and is closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The genus Betula contains 30 to 60 known taxa of which 11 are on the IUCN 2011 Green List of Threatened Species. They are typically rather short-lived pioneer species widespread in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in northern temperate and boreal climates.
The common name birch comes from Old English birce, bierce, from Proto-Germanic *berk-jōn (cf. German Birke, West Frisian bjirk), an adjectival formation from *berkōn (cf. Dutch berk, Low German Bark, Danish birk, Norwegian bj�rk), itself from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰerHǵ- ~ bʰrHǵ-, which also gave Lithuanian b�r�as, Latvian Bērziņ�, Russian ber�za, Ukrainian ber�za, Albanian bredh �fir�, Ossetian b�rz(�), Sanskrit bhurja, Polish brzoza, Latin fraxinus �ash (tree)�. This root is presumably derived from *bʰreh₁ǵ- �to shine�, in reference to the birch's white bark. The Proto-Germanic rune berkanan is named after the birch.
The generic name betula is from Latin, which is a diminutive borrowed from Gaulish betua (cf. Old Irish bethe, Welsh bedw).
Birch species are generally small to medium-sized trees or shrubs, mostly of temperate climates. The simple leaves are alternate, singly or doubly serrate, feather-veined, petiolate and stipulate. They often appear in pairs, but these pairs are really borne on spur-like, two-leaved, lateral branchlets.[4] The fruit is a small samara, although the wings may be obscure in some species. They differ from the alders (Alnus, other genus in the family) in that the female catkins are not woody and disintegrate at maturity, falling apart to release the seeds, unlike the woody, cone-like female alder catkins.
The bark of all birches is characteristically marked with long, horizontal lenticels, and often separates into thin, papery plates, especially upon the paper birch. Its decided color gives the common names gray, white, black, silver and yellow birch to different species.
The buds form early and are full grown by midsummer, all are lateral, no terminal bud is formed; the branch is prolonged by the upper lateral bud. The wood of all the species is close-grained with satiny texture, and capable of taking a fine polish; its fuel value is fair.
Flower and fruit
The flowers are monoecious, opening with or before the leaves and borne once fully grown these leaves are usually 3�6 millimetres (0.12�0.24�in) long on three-flowered clusters in the axils of the scales of drooping or erect catkins or aments. Staminate aments are pendulous, clustered or solitary in the axils of the last leaves of the branch of the year or near the ends of the short lateral branchlets of the year. They form in early autumn and remain rigid during the winter. The scales of the staminate aments when mature are broadly ovate, rounded, yellow or orange color below the middle, dark chestnut brown at apex. Each scale bears two bractlets and three sterile flowers, each flower consisting of a sessile, membranaceous, usually two-lobed, calyx. Each calyx bears four short filaments with one-celled anthers or strictly, two filaments divided into two branches, each bearing a half-anther. Anther cells open longitudinally. The pistillate aments are erect or pendulous, solitary; terminal on the two-leaved lateral spur-like branchlets of the year. The pistillate scales are oblong-ovate, three-lobed, pale yellow green often tinged with red, becoming brown at maturity. These scales bear two or three fertile flowers, each flower consisting of a naked ovary. The ovary is compressed, two-celled, and crowned with two slender styles; the ovule is solitary.
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October 22nd, 2015
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