The specific name, lutea (yellow), refers to the color of the wood and bark of the trunk. The yellow birch is found throughout the Northeastern States.
Red or River Birch Betula nigra
A medium-sized tree found on the edges of streams. Long, graceful, sweeping upper limbs, with small, pendulous lower branches. The bark is reddish, very shaggy and loose, flaking off and rolling back in thin strips. Alternate leaf-scars. Twigs reddish brown and pliant.
RED BIRCH
Betula nigra
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The red birch is easily distinguished from all the other birches by its reddish, loosely peeling bark, which gives the trunk an unkempt, shaggy, and torn appearance. The outer bark separates into flakes which are loose at one end and adhere to the trunk at the other, and these projecting strips look like a fringe. The lower branches often bend down towards the ground in a straggling, irregular fashion, while the upper branches are free and sweeping. It should not be inferred from this description that the red birch is lacking in beauty, for it is a most attractive tree. Its general outline is picturesque, and the soft red color of the peeling epidermis of the bark in the upper branches has a very pleasing effect. The red birch is the only semi-aquatic species among the birches, and its drooping branches hanging over the water add much to the beauty of our streams and rivers.
Its wood is light but strong, and is used for furniture, wooden ware, and yokes.
The specific name, nigra (black), was given it by Linnæus, the celebrated Swedish botanist,—it seems to have no particular significance.
The red birch is found growing on the banks of the Nashua and Merrimac Rivers and beside smaller streams in Massachusetts, but it grows more frequently along river banks in the South than in the North.