Yellow Birch for firewood

[SwampDonkey]

The minty oil is volatile and evaps off when boiled. I know this as I've boiled yellow birch sap.

[cutterboy]

Black birch makes great firewood.. slightly more BTU's than red oak (tho it doesn't split as well) also makes beautiful lumber. I burn a lot of it because I have a lot of it on the farm.

[barbender]

The old growth forests here must've had a fair amount of yellow birch, as oftentimes after the virgin pine was logged companies would double back for the hardwood. Yellow birch was always mentioned in those harvests, whereas today we don't come across it all that much. It is rare enough that it is almost always reserved on our timber sales. White birch grows in abundance. What conditions does yellow birch regenerate well in?

[wisconsitom]

@barbender, yellow birch associates are eastern hemlock, sugar maple, N. red oak, white pine, and some others.  Ideal site is moist well-drained.  Intermediate shade tolerance, less than SM.

It seems like the downward trend in YB recruitment in recent decades might be related to this shading factor-maple is dominating more than in the past, and deer effects.

The area in Wisconsin with the best YB density is roughly from Wausau up to UP border.  Ottawa NF in the UP is best YB area I've ever seen.

It's in the woods around my land but not frequent.  Is one of the few hardwoods I'll probably plant and try to encourage on my postage stamp.  One of these springs!

[SwampDonkey]

The old growth forests here must've had a fair amount of yellow birch, as oftentimes after the virgin pine was logged companies would double back for the hardwood. Yellow birch was always mentioned in those harvests, whereas today we don't come across it all that much. It is rare enough that it is almost always reserved on our timber sales. White birch grows in abundance. What conditions does yellow birch regenerate well in?

The big birch die back/collapse in the early 40's due to a hurricane in 1938. The old growth birch at the time died off. A lot of this was from sun scald of residuals within 3 years post hurricane. In Maine 67% had died and of the remaining ones, 15% were dying. New York Adirondacks lost 25%, especially on the hill tops. Added to that was the death of the beech from bark disease and stands with a lot of balsam fir collapsing from age or budworms. If you have a stand of birch and fir, when the fir dies out, say bye bye to the birch. Same happens in shelterwood cuts, too much sun on the birch boles. Seen it.

Yellow birch seedlings are easy to grow in nursery. If you have a lot of deer/moose or hares, out planting will be hard. I planted an acre by the house, good success. Out in the woods, the wildlife had them ate within a week.

[barbender]

I would imagine it is an issue of deer browse around here. But we do get on certain sites that are thick with YB. Typically wetter soil, on the edge of black spruce/cedar/tamarack. Or on nice moist hilly upland sites. But on the nice hardwood sites, all you see are old growth with no regen.

[moodnacreek]

Don't light a match near the tree .

[peakbagger]

The claim in one of the Pike books is that newbies to the logging camp would be bet that they could not climb a yellow birch. Once the newby was up there they would light the birch curls on the bark and the flames would travel up the tree. I am not sure how true it was. 

[moodnacreek]

Sounds like 'Spiked Boots'.

[Oliver05262]

Yellow birch makes nice furniture. H T Cushman here in North Bennington, VT used it exclusively. I don’t know all the reasons, but the one I was told was that or takes stain more evenly than a lot of other woods. They had a “ secret sauce” recipe for their maple colored stain that other furniture manufacturers tried real hard to duplicate.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Not much Yellow birch in my woods.
There are a number of BTU charts on line.
BTU content is right up there slightly below White ash.
Black birch is just above the ash.
My splitter doesnt care about difficult splitting.

[wisconsitom]

We had to run up to Wausau to pick up my winch (woo hoo, new skidding winch) and driving from there to my land, we traversed what's got to be this state's best yellow birch area.  High rocky country (for the Midwest), moist upland mixtures of sugar maple , white ash ,(too bad what's coming for the ash), beech, not diseased, hemlock, and some others.

I tend to think of that area as having some of the finest forests in WI.

Then we hit the Menominee Reservation.  That IS the finest forest in the state!

Our postage stamp is just the other side of the res.

[barbender]

I've heard that the Menominee have a fine forestry program and timber.

[wisconsitom]

Yo bender, not me, but others have at times described the Menominee forestland as best east of the Mississippi.

I can believe it!

[cutterboy]

I thought I'd give an update since I'm now burning the yellow birch I cut last March. It is as good as everyone says it is. It gives a nice even burn and as an all nighter it does well leaving hot coals in the morning. Let me tell you, put a piece on live coals and the little curls of bark will light up in a flash. Instant flames!
All in all, I'm very happy with it.

[KEC]

I think I delivered a trailer load of Yellow Birch to that mill in Vermont from Central NY in the mid 1970's. My brother was yard man at the mill I worked for and he loaded the trailer up enough to have a gross weight of 89,000 lbs. The tractor was an International with a 238 HP Detroit and 10 speed roadranger. It barely had enough power and gears to climb those steep grades and nearly stalled out.  

[barbender]

The sound from that Detroit pulling those grades at #89K is probably still circling the earth!😂

[OntarioAl]

We built a tanker for fire control purposes IHC Tandem Detroit (same Hp.)
RTO 13 over, 2500 imperial gallon tank (used SS milk tank)
Straight pipe
We named "Rolling Thunder"
Cheers
Al

[SwampDonkey]

We get about a 10% yellow birch mix with sugar maple. The amazing thing is on a  clear cut it will come back 90% yellow birch. I was thinning all last fall on ground like that. Millions of yellow birch grew up and scattered maple through it. Just the opposite of the mature forest around it.

[wisconsitom]

Yeah, the y. birch is less shade-tolerant than the maple.