Hello all my northern brethren. Wondering about Birch regeneration. Specifically we have some stands that we have been cruising that have quite a lot of Betula lenta (black birch, sweet birch). So much regeneration that is is creating closed canopies that resemble beech stands. Nothing else or rarely anything else has regenerated, this is from mid slopes (800') up to ridges at about 1400'. Very pretty young stands but...no timber.
Is this a common phenomena a bit further north? We've seen it on 3 tracts we've cruised in 3 weeks. All are a bit more mountainous than our normal properties but man...what yellow poplar and red oak. We're worried that the birch has outcompeted the YP regen in many spots and that...that is saying something.
Hey NW, hope things are well for you!
No experience with black/sweet birch but if conditions are right I get dog hair patches of yellow birch. Have seen gray birch do the same but that seems even more of a pioneer species and wants more open space. The yellow birch will fill in a natural or man made canopy opening like skid trails or where a large tree or a few trees came out.
Thankfully yellow birch makes nice logs here. It does fill the canopy and I try to help along the thinning where needed but my land isn't at danger of becoming birch monoculture like with the beech even with no management. There is a 3acre strip between low pure hemlock stand and maple/beech ridge top that is almost pure yellow birch with just a couple of wolf maples and it is a beautiful stand and a beautiful place.
North slopes, history of heavy cutting? From the reference below:
https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/sp/sp_ne113.pdf (https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/sp/sp_ne113.pdf)
Most of our paper birch regen up here is from stump sprouting, so the trees are usually in clumps of 4-6 stems. Otherwise it seeds in after fires or openings like landings. We have yellow birch, but it is relatively rare. Birch isn't trying to take over up here😊
Handy,
Excellent article.
Quote from: nativewolf on October 20, 2021, 07:01:06 AM
We're worried that the birch has outcompeted the YP regen in many spots and that...that is saying something.
yeah that would be something. i have 4-6" yellow poplar that i cut off pocket high maybe 3 years ago who's resprouts have gained 15 or 20 feet of height and wrist size diameter just popping out of the stump, while the cherry i released by the cut just stagnated.
tulips' will to live is incredible.
Up here it is time of year (ripe seed) and ground skidding. I've seen sugar maple dominant stands turn into yellow birch from seed trees about as abundant as 1-4 birch per acre. The stuff makes millions of seeds. In October it falls like confetti. :D
Stump sprouted birches up this way is most always grey birch. But white birch is common on old field to have multi stems. Grey birch, a large non commercial shrub we call oversized alders. Or maybe that's just me. I hate grey birch. Seen lots of wasted/trashed forest land made into grey birch ground. :D
That was a good paper. I'm looking out at the Nat'l Forest in Wythe Co. I'll try to remember to ask if they found any more of that small leaved variant.
Sweet Birch is prolific mixed in a NW facing beech stand here on our place at about 2500'. It is in lightly with the pines, poplar, red oak. Beech bark disease did roll through 15-20 years ago with nectria, which didn't really seem that interested in the birch, some fine twiggery but no stems that I recall. We have had ice damage,
Structurally quite strong, the strength grouping is Beech/Black Birch/Hickory but the bugs love it. I borate it before stickering. It would be good flooring. From the comment in the paper about distilling the bark, it might be where the bark is worth more than the log. I've been in a house where the entry 1/2 bath was "wallpapered" in smooth bronze colored birch bark, beautiful.
barbender is right on about birch up here. In the situation you describe I would think, based on our paper birch, that a disturbance and good seed year coincided. It takes bare mineral soil for paper birch to seed in but it can do so prodigiously if there is a good seed crop.
Clark
All species of birch are prolific seeders. Given a combination of a good seed year - which occurs frequently with birches - and suitable growing conditions, birch will grow as thick as hair on a dogs back.
Thanks all. I'm downloading that paper mr handyandy. It was just odd to see pure birch outcompeting YP.
Mike, we see just amazing YP regen all the time. I'm due to start prunning off some stump sprouts in 2 years. We need enough shade to keep the other sprouts suppressed, we'll go to 1.
Multistemed birch is usually from animal browse. Like cattle and deer do to our northern white cedar. Old pasture is full of multistem cedar if it is marginal land and adjacent to a seed source. Moose will hit young birch up here and at about 4 feet up most all be bent down or broken off. Completely ruined. :D
There is a lot of black birch on my farm but no dense stands of it. Some areas are 50-60% but always mixed with red maple, red oak, hickory and some white (paper) birch. Black birch makes pretty lumber but there doesn't seem to be much demand for it. It makes great fire wood as it has about the same density as red oak.
HandyAndy, thanks for that excellent article. That Harvard Forest it mentions is 10 miles from me.
Cutter boy, have you ever stopped into the fisher museum ? They have a really kool diorama of the 1800s to the present.
Better then beech!!!
In our market black birch is graded on yellow birch specs. Makes veneer and sawlog grades and is actually a decent return. They grow fast, straight respond to thinning. I would be thankful.
The other thing is that deer dont browse it. So they do get a boost towards life in that regard. As things are warming in our region you can see the black birch creeping north up the Connecticut river valley and expanding its growing zones.
Birches are prolific seeders so the trend looks to continue. I think it's an underrated and undervalued specie of the future
Yellow birch was always the #2 species for veneer up this way. Sugar maple the first. But birch can have more heartwood in the veneer specs than maple. 8) I've seen them take birch down to 4 foot 4" for veneer. :)
In the states, YB is the preferred species for veneer. Further north (Canada), WB is good, because less worm track than in the US. WB in the states is often riddled with worm track - warmer climate, I believe. Black birch is not as good - generally more defects and the sap wood tends to be more of a yellow color rather than white; but can produce some fine veneer on occasion. Whiter wood is preferred for veneer - in maple and birch.
Quote from: Ed_K on October 22, 2021, 08:49:31 AM
Cutter boy, have you ever stopped into the fisher museum ? They have a really kool diorama of the 1800s to the present.
Yes Ed, I have been there a number of times and it is really very interesting. Anyone who is interested in New England history, land, and forests should go see it. In the town of Petersham Ma. on Rt. 32.
Our veneer buyers here were always Americans, Columbia Forest Products being one, Miller Veneers another. One other bought the short birch. Those buyers always paid more for maple. They buy yellow and white birch also though, but could be $1000 bucks less compared to maple for the top stuff. We do grow large white birch up here. A lot of my travels including the west coast, I never saw a white birch bigger than 10", compared to 30-40" here in old growth. And we lost a lot of big white birch in the 40's to the die-off, well documented. Seen lots of cambial worm damage in sugar maple, it's live wood that heals and leaves a brown streak, not stain. The 'worm' is a fly larva. On my loom the wood is maple, and veneer quality, but I can see worm tracks in some pieces. She's all clear wood, no knots or heart stain.
It think in our virgin Minnesota forests, there was a lot of yellow birch. It seems to have been a somewhat important secondary commercial species at the time. I'm not sure why, but it didn't seem to reseed and come back as it is pretty rare. Some harvest sites we'll see it, it is typically deserved in the contract. A lot of our harvester guys don't even realize it's a different species. I'll ask them, "are we supposed to be cutting the yellow birch out here?", looking at a grapple full of harvested yellow birch. "What yellow birch?"😂😂 In fact, I've never been able to get ahold of any yellow birch logs to put on the Mizer, the stuff we cut is typically poor quality. There is a apparently a lot of it laying at the bottom of the harbor in Duluth, where there were large sawmills back in the virgin logging boom.
Around here alot of our old clearcuts or heavy thinning have come back to dense black birch stands hasn't been long enough to see what will eventually happen but they are almost a monoculture. come In right along with the Blackberrys etc.
This one is documented in Great Trees of New Brunswick, but by no means the biggest, there's others 16" bigger in diameter. This one is close to 28" now.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_yellowbirch-old.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1635000848)
Gotta look up to see the yellow bark. :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_yellowbirch-wlt-023.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1192063469)
Planted these :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_yellow_birch_Pl1~0.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1635001275)
It definitely gets a different look than white birch as it ages.
20" white birch.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_whitebirch-001.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1192063455)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_whitebirch-002.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1192063456)
That undergrowth is beeeeeech!! :D
We get some pretty nice white birch on some sites. It tends to do better over towards Lake Superior. The biggest, clearest white birch I've ever seen was over that way, where the ground is a red iron tinted gravel and ledge rock. Beautiful Spruce and Birch, whereas the balsam at 4" was completely hollow🤷♂️ So I don't know if it is the cooler, milder lake effect micro- climate or the soil. Or a combination of those factors. I'm not a forester😊
Site probably. I've seen white birch grow nice on wetter ground sometimes. Not ideal site. But the fir can't take wet and if over topped by the birch, even worst. :D But on a raised spot in there out of the wet a fir can grow to be 20". Sneaky buggers. ;D But a lot of the birch on wet land here is grey birch. Seen one mill owner thin a lot of grey birch on wet ground. It's just a big shrub, but looks a lot like white birch. But leaves are deltoid and male catkins are singles and bark is tight to the trunk, not shedding. Fir definitely needs thinned and more than once but on the better sites. Waste of time on wet ground.
Used to get peeler cores from Columbia Forest Products for firewood. Lots of folks used them for fence posts and they actually did OK. Made for great firewood. Had to pay for those. On the other hand they would deliver for free the butt flare cut offs. Ummm - yea, there is a reason they gave those away. For sure they provided plenty of BTU's, only probem was those BTU's were provided while attempting to get those butt flares into some sort of firewood sized chunk of wood.
I'm surprised they even allowed but flare wood through the gate. It had to be bucked for grade on the landing up here or it was never loaded on the truck. They had their own truck hired to come get your logs.
Yellow birch is great firewood, right up there with sugar maple. Up in this region we have very little oak at all for firewood. Beech used to be great, but hard to find any that isn't mostly rotten because of disease. It's doing a number on my yard beech, slowly killing it.
Maybe it was the distance? This was out of the Presque Isle plant by the airport.
Quote from: Southside on October 24, 2021, 10:14:41 AM
Maybe it was the distance? This was out of the Presque Isle plant by the airport.
Same buyer as here, we dealt with Rick Bouche. That's 40 minutes away. Dan Morrisey did the trucking, he lives in Bairdsville, NB.
Quote from: SwampDonkey on October 24, 2021, 02:54:23 AM
I'm surprised they even allowed but flare wood through the gate. It had to be bucked for grade on the landing up here or it was never loaded on the truck. They had their own truck hired to come get your logs.
Yellow birch is great firewood, right up there with sugar maple. Up in this region we have very little oak at all for firewood. Beech used to be great, but hard to find any that isn't mostly rotten because of disease. It's doing a number on my yard beech, slowly killing it.
For me, a good element of a quality firewood is ease of splitting. Using a splitter is a pain. Birch is just a pleasure to split with an axe. So much better than oak.
I don't know, not much splits nicer than straight grained red oak.
Quote from: barbender on October 24, 2021, 12:23:43 PM
I don't know, not much splits nicer than straight grained red oak.
I see. Maybe I had a bad experience. It was stringy, and just solid as a rock. No chance at all with a maul, and the splitter was slow due to it being so stringy. Maybe it was the type of oak, or the time of year, or the size of it or something.
Around here I would say you fell for the old "give him a piece of gum" trick.
Whoomp, whoomp, whump, whump, thud, maul falls to the ground, guy is exhausted. Me "Oh look, you have a dent started, keep going, swing harder".
:D
Quote from: Southside on October 24, 2021, 12:58:06 PM
Around here I would say you fell for the old "give him a piece of gum" trick.
Whoomp, whoomp, whump, whump, thud, maul falls to the ground, guy is exhausted. Me "Oh look, you have a dent started, keep going, swing harder".
:D
It came from my own yard, so that isn't it. But you are describing my experience in very vivid detail :)
Trees from the white oak family are stringy and horrid to split. Red oak pops open nice and clean, except around knots and crotches.
Yellow birch is harder to split then white birch. White birch needs little effort to split.
Most white birch, I have into butt logs where the grain is curly and they were tough to split. But yes, usually the hardest splitting part of white birch is the bark👍🏻
Yellow birch is real twisty grain to split up this way. Just as tough as sugar maple. On some real old trees, you can see the spiral twist in it just from the bark. :D I remember big white birch left behind in piles roadside on crown lands. Great big logs. Well, in an area full of camps and DNR camp grounds that disappeared quick years back. :D
Soon as i read that i thought the same as southside.. 'He musta had a black gum.' It can easily look like a sickly oak.
That stuff stalls splitters to the point you get a chainsaw to free it.
One of the first trees to develop fall leaf color, and the color is a pleasing deep red.
Mike, I suspect that your blackgums are red now.
Down in my cedar swamp (white-cedar), a common associate is paper birch. A forester once told me the whole area had burned in the 1930s and that had set the stage for the forest we're looking at now. Cedar and birch both love nothing better than some burned up, charred ground to germinate their seeds.
From fire came the coolest, moistest, most "northern"-looking forest type.
One oddity is here and there a birch came up right alongside a cedar and the two have lived together, the birch trunk actually winding around the cedar trunk, then zooming up higher, being a faster grower. They are friends for life!
Some big cedar back in there too, especially off my property and into the next twenty. 80-footers, that's getting pretty tall for 2nd and 3rd generation stuff. White pine and balsam poplar, with a smattering of aspen, black ash, sugar maple, a birch that looks like a hybrid between yellow birch and paper, and which grows only in the wettest areas where all the springs are, one or two bur oak saplings, not an oak area, but cedar, white pine and paper birch are the main players.
Best paper birch stands I know of are up Barbender's way, along Minnesota's North Shore. I bet that area burned up on one or more occasions.
That gum sounds like elm around here ,about your only chance of splitting it with a maul is after a week of subzero temperatures with a stiff north wind whipping. Even then it can make you wish long johns weren't put on that morning :D
Quote from: wisconsitom on October 26, 2021, 09:01:31 AM
Down in my cedar swamp (white-cedar), a common associate is paper birch. A forester once told me the whole area had burned in the 1930s and that had set the stage for the forest we're looking at now. Cedar and birch both love nothing better than some burned up, charred ground to germinate their seeds.
I have a couple acres of 'cedar ground' that was clearcut, and it has a lot of white birch mixed with aspen and balsam poplar coming now. Of course the white birch had to have been there already. And the area did burn around 1910. I've found old cedar stumps with charred wood. And that also resulted in some huge aspen growing to 40" diameters in there and close to 100 feet. All decadent now, but dad cut most of them before they went rotten, 300 cords on 10 acres, just the aspen. Hauled a load every night to Houlton, Maine that February. Aspen after fire is way better stuff than from sucker growth.
Quote from: WDH on October 25, 2021, 07:26:43 AM
Mike, I suspect that your blackgums are red now.
yes sir. none of it quite pops like new england but id say we are at peak color right now. still have greens and have not had the browns take over yet. hickories are yellow and sourwood, gum and maple are bright red.
Large tooth aspen, for effect. Champion of the north. ;D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/large-tooth-Oct26-2021.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1635282946)
Late to the party but have some yellow and grey birch Regen pics..
Last harvest on this site had quite a bit of patch cuts and wide wide skid trails due to wind throw. Where there was a seed source these are coming in pretty thick with birch. Where trees were left is filling in with beech.
50ac site, whether ridge top or valley bottom this trend is holding. These pics are from a ridge top, soil type: bedrock ;D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37318/IMG_20211031_155325100.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1636036382)
Birch foreground
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37318/IMG_20211031_155452449_HDR.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1636036380)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37318/IMG_20211031_155311525_HDR.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1636036516)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37318/IMG_20211031_155259292_HDR.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1636036527)
Likely seed source
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37318/IMG_20211031_155530402_HDR.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1635765213)
Here through the beech you can almost see where some sugar maples etc were left
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37318/IMG_20211031_155613691.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1635765057)
Yellow birch, yeah! thumbs-up