Donna

Looks like it's going gangbusters, with a little leafminer activity. Not a big deal. Very vigorous tree! Yes, of course you can prune off some lower branches.

+oM

what a beautiful tree. As far as the pruning is concerned..I planted a river birch tree recently and was reading up on limbing the tree because right now mine looks like one big 10ft shrub when I bought it. Everything I have read says you are suppose to wait for January or February to prune a river birch. Here is some information from another website on this subject. I did a copy and paste..... Prune off lower branches to reveal the attractive bark but do not prune during the growing season. Rather, wait until the end of the growing season in the fall. This is especially important because the bronze birch borer is active during the spring and open pruning wounds are inviting to them.

Problems

As well, it's best to remove less than a quarter of a trees leaves (or leafy branches) in any one year, so don't take off too much at a time. If you really HAVE to take off a branch, you can go to a third of the canopy, but I try to err on the side of caution - branches can always come off later, but they can't be put back on, ever.

After the tree goes dormant each year, clean prune out the lower third of each trunk. Then throughout the growing season, pinch off any newly sprouting branch starts that the tree tries to regenerate on the lower third of the trunks. Also as soon as any appear, clean out the root suckers which want to grow up from the base of the trunks.

donna, what kind of birch is that?

good catch, traciham, re: bronze birch borer and not pruning during growing season. I should have mentioned. But.......river birch, which this appears to be, is quite resistant to this insect. Still, no harm in waiting until tree is dormant to do the pruning. There's certainly no urgency to the matter.

+oM

Thank you everyone for your advice! It is a river birch. There are a lot of yellow leaves and some that have been chewed on. what should I do about that? thank you!

I had yellow leaves too. It's caused by iron deficiency due to probably too alkaline soil. They don't like a Ph over 6.5. I put garden sulfur around the drip line and watered it in well. I also sprayed it with ironite. It greened up within a couple weeks.

My river birches used to get yellowed leaves, and sometimes lose a goodly number of them in the middle of summer, esp. if it had been hot and dry. Now that they are older, they don't seem to be as easily stressed (better root system?), and I have, so far, seen few yellow leaves. Considering the record heats of a few weeks ago, that's pretty good. I do water the flower bed up-hill from the birches, but not a whole lot....

Since my clay soil tests out as acidic, I doubt that Sunnytop's explanation is relevant for me.... Yellowing can have more than one cause - it depends on YOUR situation. What affects my plants may not be the same as what is affecting yours, and vice versa....

I agree with Dibbet that the summertime dropping of leaves by this species is due to drought stress. In its' native haunts, it can be found in low areas, along rivers (Surprise, surprise!) and such. It is not esp. well adapted to dry sites.

+oM

Oddly after 14 inches of rain in 7 days it's a little dry here - I wonder if that is why mine is dropping leaves. Plus the iron thing.