Birch Tree - encouraging young trees?

houstworks

16 years ago

How do I know which trees in my woods are young birch trees?

I would like to encourage their growth.

What do you call the young birch trees saplings?

I'm in Southern Vermont.

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Comments (9)

quirkyquercus
16 years ago
Even young birches have pretty distinctive bark, usually peeling and with lenticels and sometimes with more than one trunk.
houstworks
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks, I will look for those,
but I mean even younger
like the suckers or shoots coming up.
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quirkyquercus
16 years ago
To clarify, are you asking how do you tell if a plant is a root sucker or a seedling?
If so I don't have an answer to that one unfortunately. In the past I've found out soon enough after attempting to dig them up.
houstworks
Original Author
16 years ago
I think I want to know the name of what to look for under and around my birch trees in the woods.
Then if I look under google images I can probably recognize the young tree.

Thanks for your help.
Dibbit
16 years ago
There are books and field guides to identify trees. I would buy one, or a couple of ones - one smallish one that will fit in a pocket to take into the woods, and a bigger and possibly more comprehensive one to bring leaves and twigs home for more study and exactitude - so you do know and can learn which tree is which. Most of the larger, better guides will include juvenile leaves if they differ from the later ones.
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
16 years ago
books??? ... lol ... go to google.. type in birch ... then go to the IMAGES page and see the pix ...

learn to ID the tree..

then go out and kill all trees within 6 feet of a tree you have selected ... basically you want to reduce competition so your chosen SAPLING .... can become dominant ...

all baby trees are saplings. ... no special name for birch .... unless you prefer JOE .. lol ...

the only upside to the book .. is the ability to carry it out in the yard ....

ken
Dibbit
16 years ago
Ken, one of the benefits of books is the portability. Another is the ability to flip back and forth between two pages to compare two images with what you have in front of you and decide more easily which one you have. If you don't KNOW what you are looking at, a computer can take forever for you to make enough lucky guesses, and look at enough images, to narrow it down to "that one". And if you have to enlarge each of the thumbnail sized images, compare it to your mental - or digital camera - image, wonder, go to another, change the species listing, compare again, and then another, you can kill a LOT of time. Meanwhile I can look in a book, compare the leaf, branch structure and bark with the one on a page, say yes or no, and go to the next if need be, inside of 5 minutes. Another, for me anyway, is the amount of extraneous stuff you pick up as you page through the book - computers only give you the image you ask for, if you are lucky.

I think you may have forgotten what it's like to be a beginner - no one starts out knowing all that you now know.
ewrightb
16 years ago
I recently purchased some very young birch trees- practically twigs - and the bark has not taken on the typical appearance. I can tell they are birch by the serrated, pointy leaves. They look the same as the adult, just much smaller.
houstworks
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the help everyone!
I spent 2-3 hours online looking for this stuff
on Sunday.
Now, I think I've got enough info for what I'm looking for.

I posted this last night but I did something wrong and it didn't go thru.
Thanks!

Birch Tree - encouraging young trees?

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quirkyquercus

houstworks
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Birch Tree - encouraging young trees?

Comments (9)

quirkyquercus

houstworksOriginal Author

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quirkyquercus

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houstworks
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