Week 13: Paper Birch, Robert Frost, Gifford Pinchot

Fig. 1. New England Birches (n.d.), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939). Oil on cradled plywood panel. Held in The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.).

Headnote#

Paper birch (Betula papyrifera), also known as canoe birch or American white birch, is a mid-sized deciduous tree native to northern North America. It can be found across the northern half of the continent. Paper birch sap begins flowing near the end of sugar maple season, when daytime temperatures reach above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and continues to run for only two to three weeks, approximately half as long as maple sap. Although black and yellow birch are more commonly used to produce birch beer, which pairs their sap with wintergreen oils distilled from their bark, paper birch is best for producing syrup or “birch water molasses,” as Cree and other indigenous communities have long done, due to the balanced flavor profile and relatively high sugar content of its sap.

The tree’s wonders go beyond the culinary, touching both art and science. Visually, birches in general are a perennial favorite of painters including Vincent Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, and Georgia O’Keefe. And the actual bark of the paper birch, in particular, has provided the Anishinaabe with a medium for writing (as wiigwaasabak, a form of scroll), craft, and even transport. The tree’s visual interest and practical applications are due in large part to its high concentrations of betulin—the white, powdery, reflective, and water-resistant substance that gives the bark of the white birches its distinctive appearance. More than just a cosmetic surface, betulin is a bioactive triterpene and the primary natural source of betulinic acid, which scientists are studying for its anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, anti-cancer, and other properties.

Betulin’s protective qualities make the paper birch a sort of superhero tree, allowing it to serve as a ruderal, or early successional species. It arrives first in disturbed and vulnerable landscapes, growing quickly to create a habitat for other trees. Yet the paper birch is also relatively fragile and short-lived, vulnerable to a variety of pests and diseases—and young birch-swingers—with a shorter lifespan than other trees (roughly 80 to 140 years, or shorter in warmer, more humid climates). In the succession of a forest, larger and more durable trees take root under the paper birch and eventually surpass it, outcompeting it for both sunlight and groundwater. The paper birch is “a temporary type of forest,” as Pinchot writes; it soon disappears from the shade it made possible. In the meantime, it grows rapidly, exfoliating bark in horizontal strips as its trunk expands, like a snake shedding its skin.

Fig. 2. “Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera) Botanical and Commercial Range,” from An American Wood (Washington., D.C.: U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture - Forest Service, 1940), p. 15.

Readings#

1. Paper birch is an important tree in the Northeast, both for economic and for silvicultural reasons. Its total annual cut is not large in comparison with that of many other species, but it is an important factor in certain wood-working industries. It is used practically to the exclusion of other woods in the manufacture of spools, shoe pegs, shoe shanks, and very largely in the manufacture of toothpicks, dowels, bobbins, shuttles, and various toys and novelties. The fine-grained, even-textured wood is peculiarly adapted to these uses.

   After fires and clearings, paper birch, with aspen, is often the first species to occupy the ground. It takes possession of such areas very readily, restores forest conditions, and furnishes a valuable timber crop. At the same time, it is merely a temporary type of forest, and does not prevent the return of the type natural to the locality.

Gifford Pinchot, “Silvical Leaflets 38: Paper Birch” United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (October 29, 1908).#

2. I’d like to get away from earth awhile
   And then come back to it and begin over.
   May no fate willfully misunderstand me
   And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
   Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
   I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
   I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
   And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
   Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
   But dipped its top and set me down again.
   That would be good both going and coming back.
   One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Robert Frost, “Birches,” Atlantic Monthly (August 1915). Rpt. Robert Frost, Mountain Interval (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916), pp. 29-30.#

More#

• Halfmoon Woman (Pat Bruderer), “How Indigenous Artists Are Reinvigorating the Art of Birch Biting” (October 22, 2025).

• Studio at Ruderal, “Ruderal Aesthetics” (June 20, 2022).

• Hardeep Singh Tuli et al. “Anti-Inflammatory and Anticancer Properties of Birch Bark-Derived Betulin: Recent Developments.” Plants 10.12 (Basel, Switzerland; Dec. 2021): 2663.

  

Fig. 3. Birch and Evergreens (Gallitzin, PA: Nordstrom Nurseries, 1951). From the Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.