Comments

  1. Ice Swimmer says

    The pollen is probably mostly pine pollen, which is plentiful in early summer, though some birch pollen might be there. It had been dry for a while and then the rain came.

  3. Ice Swimmer says

    Caine @ 2

    Thank you.

    There is so much unique in birches, mostly the bark, it’s like no other tree here, aspens and alders have a somewhat similar looks but not the whiteness and paperiness.

    The first birch has been shown here before, in the post Sea Connection.

  4. says

    Ice Swimmer:

    There is so much unique in birches, mostly the bark, it’s like no other tree here

    There is, I think of them as the record keepers, the story tellers of the standing ones.

  5. says

    I love birches. There’S nothing like their lush green in spring.
    Our current flat looks over a very young birch wood (20 years or so. A big storm tore down the old wood all down the hill and then the birches won the race to repopulate): The way it sways and moves in wind is almost sea-like.

  6. says

    Birches are beautifull, and a very good tree for an artist, whether as a wood carver, basket weaver or bonsai-tree grower (I am two of those). They are also pioneering succession plants and sometimes grow in the most bizzare places. Like old gutters, walls and roofs and parapets of abandoned (and sometimes even still used) buildings etc.

    One of the trees in my collection is a birch that I got from a seedling which took root in a crack between two pavement stones in the seventh stock of the student dorm in which I resided during my life on the university. Unfortunately it is not in any shape to show to anyone right now because a few years back during a tough vinter voles got berserk in my collection and destroyed or damaged everything non-coniferous and to a tree a recovery means a few years or even decades.

    As a young woodcarver I learned one interesting thing about birches. Their wood is described as “soft” in literature, but whenever I tried to do anything out of it, I found it to be the opposite. When dried, it is reasonably hard to carve, hard to split, very fine grained and thus allowing for very fine detail. Some of the best things I have ever done were done from birchwood.

    However it is very prone to both wet and dry rot and draws moisture quite readily. So my suspicion behind the “soft” mark in literature is that it is to be attributed to birch wood being dried cut in planks, in the open among other woods. Birch wood has to be dried in split halves, under the roof, protected from elements and insects at all time, otherwise it becomes very quickly useless for anything else than kindling.

  7. Ice Swimmer says

    Charly @ 6

    Here, birch is considered as a heavy and hard wood, as oak and maple are relatively uncommon (almost all maple or oak lumber is imported) apart from being used as ornamental trees. Birches are the third most common trees in Finland, after (Scots) pine and (Norway) spruce.

  8. says

    Compared to maple birch is definitively softer :)

    Very nice pictures. btw. The polinated puddle looks extremely interesting -- like a extremely complicated fractal.

  9. rq says

    I’m particular to birches in the autumn, they turn this brilliant shade of golden yellow that really glows, esp. in sunshine.
    They’re also a rather curious hardy north-loving tree. Even in the large pine forests that grow in the sandy parts of the country (umm, actually quite far inland from the coast, in some areas), wherever the land dips a bit lower to create a water reservoir (not a swamp, but a damper patch of forest than usual), it is populated with birches. There’s quite the sharp border between the populations, too -- you’ll be surrounded by pines, and then suddenly you’re surrounded by white and silver and stepping into mud. It’s quite fascinating, they really stand out among all the dark green.

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