| 1. Winter buds. |
| 2. Flowering branch. |
| 3. Sterile flower, back view. |
| 4. Sterile flower, front view. |
| 5. Fertile flower. |
| 6. Fruiting branch. |
| 7. Fruit. |
| 8. Mature leaf. |
Betula lutea, Michx. f.
Yellow Birch. Gray Birch.
Habitat and Range.—Low, rich woodlands, mountain slopes.
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Rainy river.
New England,—abundant northward; common throughout, from borders of lowland swamps to 1000 feet above the sea level; more common at considerable altitudes, where it often occurs in extensive patches or belts.
South to the middle states, and along the mountains to Tennessee and North Carolina; west to Minnesota.
Habit.—A large tree, at its maximum in northern New England 60-90 feet high and 2-4 feet in diameter at the base. In the forest the main trunk separates at a considerable height into a few large branches which rise at a sharp angle, curving slightly, forming a rather small, irregular head, widest near the top; while in open ground the head is broad-spreading, hemispherical, with numerous rather equal, long and slender branches, and a fine spray with drooping tendencies. In the sunlight the silvery-yellow feathering and the metallic sheen of trunk and branches make the yellow birch one of the most attractive trees of the New England forest.
Bark.—Bark of trunks and large limbs in old trees gray or blackish, lustreless, deep-seamed, split into thick plates, standing out at all sorts of angles; in trees 6-8 inches in diameter, scarf-bark lustrous, parted in ribbon-like strips, detached at one end and running up the trunk in delicate, tattered fringes; season's shoots light yellowish-green, minutely buff-dotted, woolly-pubescent, becoming in successive seasons darker and more lustrous, the dots elongating into horizontal lines. Aromatic but less so than the bark of the black birch; not readily detachable like the bark of the canoe birch.