There's no mistaking the leaves of river birch (Betula nigra) for paper birch (B. papyrifera). Bear in mind that paper bich bark is reddish in young trees, and then goes into white.

I've given these instructions about 10 times during the last week or so, but so far no one has used them. I thought they were simple, but I'm beginning to wonder why no one ever uses them after I type them out. If you have problems, PLEASE let me know so I can correct any errors or hard to follow parts. One of the easiest ways to provide your photo to be embedded into a post is to upload it onto an image hosting site such as Photobucket, Flickr, etc. That should be pretty straight forward, and the individual sites will give instructions on how to get your photos uploaded to their site when you sign up. Once your picture has been uploaded, find its web address by right clicking on the image and copying the image location. Some sites may even provide the address in a text box below the photo for your convenience. Let's say, as an example, that the address of the picture you want to post is http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg To embed the picture into a post, use the command img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg"> Note that I had to use special characters to get the command above to show up here without turning into a picture, but you can use it as shown (with the correct image location, of course).

The symptoms appear to be a type of phytotoxemia, a chemical reaction from the plant to the saliva or feeding of an insect. Many different insects cause cause this, including types of mites, aphids, leafhoppers, psyllids, and others. Can't really say what yours might be, sorry.

We have a ginormous mature river birch up here in our yard in Maine and it’s gorgeous, but aside from issues of placement etc, I’d fear as it grows it may not give you the screening you require for your first floor deck — ours has three main trunks and branches out at maybe 15-20 feet and gives privacy to our second and third stories but not the first (!). It’s a gorgous, mobile tree, perhaps best down closer to your waterfront? My parents in the upper Midwest just put in a thornless locust in a similar position next to their patio, with vey similar desires for privacy and lacy shade — you might take a look at that species? edit: argh, didn’t check date on original post, sorry. got houzzed!