Silver birch

“ A tree of several species, constituting the genus Betula; as, the white or common birch (B. alba) (also called silver birch and lady birch) ; the dwarf birch (B. glandulosa) ; the paper or canoe birch (B. papyracea) ; the yellow birch (B. lutea) ; the black or cherry birch (B. lenta) .
2. The wood or timber of the birch.
3. A birch twig or birch twigs, used for flogging.
μ The twigs of the common European birch (B. alba) , being tough and slender, were formerly much used for rods in schools. ”

“ Leaves ’em all black, an’ sometimes kills ’em, right aout—not to say anything ’bout settin’ the rest o’ the woods on fire.”
“What sort of a birch is that, over by that rock, uncle Will?” asked Randolph.
“That? That’s a black birch. Nice tasting bark. When we get to the top and have lunch, [138] we’ll talk about birches a little, if you like. Let me see, whose favorite tree was it last year? Tom’s?”
“Bessie’s, of course. Tom’s was the oak, because it wore squirrels and oak-leaf trimming!” ”

“ They are chiefly grown for the charcoal, which is valuable for gunpowder.
"Copper-Beeches"—red-leaved beech-trees, very beautiful for ornamental purposes—all come from one red-leaved beech, a sort of freak of nature, which was found about a century ago in a wood in Germany.
The Birch (Betula alba, &c.) is also a tree of very distinctive appearance. The silver-white bark, which peels so delightfully under childish fingers, is not less charming to the sketcher's eye, whether as a near study or as gleaming points of high light against the grey greens and misty purples of a Highland hillside. ”

“ A fir-tree loves a water border, loves a long wind in a draughty canon, loves to spend itself secretly on the inner finishings of its burnished, shapely cones. Broken open in mid-season the petal-shaped scales show a crimson satin surface, perfect as a rose.
The birch—the brown-bark western birch characteristic of lower stream tangles—is a spoil sport. It grows thickly to choke the stream that feeds it; grudges it the sky and space for angler's rod and fly. The willows do better; painted-cup, cypripedium, and the hollow stalks of span-broad white umbels, find a footing among their stems. ”

“ Then a door opened on the left, opposite the first portal, and from it issued a fourth priest in robes of richest purple, followed by another in crimson, and still another in wondrous green. They, also, wore the high, feathery helmets and carried the instruments with gold and silver disks.
When the last three had joined the first trio, other portals opened along the sides of the temple, and half a dozen more priests entered and strode forward. The brilliant colors of their frocks seemed a part of the devilish gong-droning. In the dim vastness of the temple they moved on, silent as ghosts. ”

“ But in the open spots of the wood—in the glades where life most prevails—are the beautiful birches, with their striped, silvery bark. Well does this tree merit its appellation of "lady of the woods." There is none so frail, so graceful, nor so generally beautiful. Almost every part of the birch is used and for a great variety of purposes. In spring the delicate green of the larch hangs in trailing tassels, and contrasts well with the dark green foliage of the indigenous pine. ”

“ It will grow where it is subjected to great heat, as well as where it must endure extreme cold, with its slender roots exploring the beds of peat, the rich humus of the old wood, or the raw soil of the mountain-side, where it has to cling to rocks and a few mosses. Given plenty of light, and it seems to care for little else. Though a mere shrub in the far north, with us the Birch has a trunk sometimes as tall as eighty, but more frequently fifty feet, and a girth of from two to three feet. In its first decade it increases in height at the rate of a foot and a half or two feet in a year ”

“ For ordinary household purposes pottery was still essential, and besides that, there were many to whom services of plate and gold or silver vessels for use or ornament were a luxury unattainable. Hence it was natural that there should follow a general tendency to imitate in the humbler material what was beyond reach in the more precious, and the practice arose, not only of adorning vessels of clay with reliefs in imitation of the chased vases, but even of covering them with some preparation to give them the appearance of metal. ”

“ As you turn away from the main road towards the woods, you pass groups of tall slender birch-trees, with their white silvery bark, and their delicate thread-like fibres hanging in frozen showers from the ends of the branches, and clothing the birch with a kind of icy foliage, while the other trees remain bare and ragged. The birch is eminently a winter tree, and its tresses of fibres, whether petrified and covered with crystal by the frost, or waving freely in the breeze which has stripped them of their snow, are equally ornamental. ”

“ The growing fashion of using only vases of chased gold and silver in preference to painted pottery made itself more and more felt both in Greece and Italy during the Alexandrine period. The same tendency which we have already noted, to reproduce as far as possible the characteristics and appearance of metal, may be observed in all the pottery of this period. Not only do the subjects moulded in relief reproduce the appearance of the chased and repoussé designs, but the shapes are those of the metal vases, and even in the black glaze there are attempts to produce a metallic effect. ”

“ The characteristic white birches, with their reflection in the quiet pool, the dark trunk and spreading branches of the great tree in the foreground, the tender foliage, and soft, hazy gleams into the depths of the forest, afford the materials for a delightful picture, the more precious in our sight that it is so truly a representation of our native land, so thoroughly American. The broken birch canoe adds to the beauty of nature a most effective and pathetic touch, by briefly figuring the melancholy history of a fast-departing race. ”

“ Soft and balmy winds sighing through the dark pine tree tops, a sky of moving clouds, with many a rift of darkest blue between, birds singing on the bonnie silver birches, their wild, glad notes sounding from every copse, the linnet on the yellow patches of whins or gorse that hugged the ground and perfumed the air for many a yard around, and the wild pigeon murmuring his notes of love in every thicket of spruce. Rare and beautiful wildflowers everywhere, such as never grow in England, for every country has its own sweet flora. ”

“ The Birches. If the black birch with its sweet, aromatic bark is not known to a boy, the white, or canoe, birch is sure to be. It seems to be the fate of this beautiful tree to be disfigured by every wandering youth who has strength enough to tear off a strip of its paper-like bark.
Fig. 105. Leaf of Black Birch
The leaf of the black, or sugar, birch may be distinguished from the elm by its smoothness and thinness. ”

“ The bark has a reddish tinge, and it is so loose and ragged-looking that it has been said to roll up its bark in coarse ringlets, which are whitish with a stain of crimson. The red birch, which is more rare than any of the other kinds, is a much larger tree than the white birch, but, like all its relations, it is very graceful. The wood is white and hard and makes very good fuel, while the twigs are made into brooms for sweeping streets and courtyards. ”

“ Possessing all the good qualities of the white birch, it combines with them a beauty and delicate grace yielded by no other tree. It is an upright grower, with slender, drooping branches, adorned with leaves of deep rich green, each leaf being delicately cut, as with a knife, into semi-skeletons. ”

“ The early fibulæ were of bronze, and the military generally were restricted to the wearing of silver, gold fibulæ being only allowed to the tribunes. Valerian commanded Zosimio the procurator of Syria to present to Claudius II., when military tribune, two fibulæ of silver gilded, and one of gold, as an extra donative [4] , and Aurelian conceded to the common soldiers the permission of wearing gold fibulæ [5] From this period their use may be traced under the Byzantine empire till the Saxon times, although but few Saxon ornaments formed of gold have been found. ”

“ Reposing under the slender birches in the glade is a party of girls, young men and grown-up people. One sits on the stump of a felled tree, another on the trunk of an old birch struck down in a storm, a third lies upon an overcoat spread on the grass, a fourth rests his back against a young birch. There is a single, slight glow of a cigarette, but this, too, goes out.
In the luminous, haunting mist everything seems white, translucent, fabulously impressive. And it seems as though the birches in the glade and the moon in the sky are waiting for something.
Here is Natasha. ”

“ The male and female blossoms of this tree also grow separate on the same plant. Its seeds are small and plumed, whereby they are particularly adapted for being sown by the aid of the wind. There are about thirteen species in North America. Common Birch, abounding in northern Europe, is a beautiful tree sixty to seventy feet high. The bark is used in medicine and dyeing, and it yields the birch tar employed in the preparation of Russia leather. Red or River Birch grows in the United States from Massachusetts to Iowa and Kansas, south to Florida and Texas. ”

“ To look at this tree is like looking at a picture or reading a poem: one feels somehow refreshed. Nor is the black birch without charm; its bark has a dusky beauty, and again shows fine wood colors and metallic tints similar to the black cherry. This fine luster the birch has in an eminent degree while most trees show it only on their small branches, if at all.
Club-mosses appear to be a lesser growth of pines, a pygmy folk dwelling at the feet of the elder race. Here are miniature trunks and branches bearing miniature cones, perfect little conifers no higher than a chickadee. ”

“ A number of birches are cultivated as ornamental trees, the weeping birch being extensively planted in this country. They are graceful of form, fair appearing from bark to least tremulous leaf. They are easily propagated by seeds and grow rapidly.
The American White Birch has a short life, but is a graceful tree and plucky one, springing up in deforested land and abandoned fields. It grows south as far as Pennsylvania. It is a small tree, from 25 to 45 feet high, the bark smooth and white, not readily peeling ”

“ They know it well enough. They have eaten birch bark, many a time; and, for ought I know, some [46] of them have felt a tingling sensation in the region of the back and legs, brought about by the use of birch twigs in the hands of some schoolmaster.
Well, Moses Ramble was crossing Billy Birch's woods one day in the spring of the year. For awhile, he whistled along, as merry-hearted as the blue birds that had just returned from their southern tour, and who were chirping on the branches over his head, breaking off, now and then, a few sprigs of birch, from the trees along his path. ”

“ And amongst the common effects in all northern countries, one of the most brilliant is the opposition of birch trunks in sunshine against the deep blue or purple of a mountain distance in shadow. At all seasons of the year the beauty of the birch is attractive and peculiarly its own. ”

“ The white, or common birch-tree, is not of a large growth, but when cultivated in a favourable soil, and a good situation, it rises to a considerable height. There is a degree of elegance in its general appearance, in summer, and the bark in winter is frequently variegated with red and white. It is easily cultivated by the usual method; but, when raised from seed, the young shoots of the birch should remain two years in the seminary, and then be transplanted in rows. ”

“ In fact, to the peasants of the North, the Birch is as beneficent as is the Palm to the Indians. No wonder, then, that the Russians are very fond of the Birch, and surround their dwellings with it; believing, as they do, that this tree is never struck by lightning.——On the Day of Pentecost, it is a custom among young Russian maidens to suspend garlands on the trees they love best, and they are careful to tie round the stems of the Birch-trees a little red ribbon as a charm to cause them to flourish and to protect them from the Evil Eye. ”

“ Best when grown individually. There are fifteen or more species belonging to the genus (Fagus) . The blue beech or ironwood, a rather small tree, may be used where its peculiar color is desired.
Birch.—Some twenty-four species are known in the United States, inhabiting mostly the northern part, extending into Canada and Alaska. The birches, especially the paper or white birch, are distinguished by their light-colored bark. That of the white birch was used by the Indians for canoes. It is an excellent park tree if it can be saved from being peeled by the ubiquitous vandal. ”

“ You spoke in your last chronicle of the screen of white birches through which you saw the sun rise over the meadows of Opal Farm. This birch springs up in waste lands almost everywhere. We have it in abundance in the wood lot on the side of our hill, and it is scattered through the wet woods below our wild walk, showing that all it needs is a foothold. ”

“ The day was glorious, and we had driven through lanes perfumed by the fresh green birch, with its bark silvery and many-tinted, and over commons where the very air was loaded with the heavy fragrance of the furze, an odour resembling in richness its golden blossoms, just as the scent of the birch is cool, refreshing, and penetrating, like the exquisite colour of its young leaves, until we reached the top of the hill, where, on one side, the enclosed wood, where the lilies grow, sank gradually, in an amphitheatre of natural terraces, to a piece of water at the bottom ”