Graceful, slender, fragile, feminine, delicate, dainty – that's the birch, the Lady of the Woods. This tree's silhouette is easily recognisable, its lacy network of drooping branches, from which its Latin name, Betula pendula, is derived, is unique. Its pale grey, white almost, bark is distinctive too, both for its colouring and for its tendency to curl and peel from the trunk.
Birch has the quality of endurance; in our family is an "Eskimo" canoe, three or four inches long, made of a sliver of wood and of now-darkening bark. This was sent to a couple of children in Scarborough, along with a tiny pair of fur-trimmed bark mo
ccasins, by neighbours who had emigrated to Alaska about 80 years ago.
Apart from the decorative, birch, hard-wearing and close-grained, has other uses. At one time the spokes and felloes of the wheels of lighter horse-drawn vehicles were of birch, and so were trinket-boxes, tubs, vats and so on.
It was almost as much in demand as alder for clog-soles, the close grain of the wood making it well-suited for workers on the damp floors of textile mills and coal-mines.
Some years ago I was told by an elderly man that his father's business at Skewsby, on the Howardian Hills, dwindled and eventually closed, partly because the demand for clog-soles petered out; the Harrisons bought standing timber, especially birch, he said, cut it to a suitable size – just about that of a house-brick – and despatched the blocks by rail, to the West Riding from the station known as Hovingham Spa.
An old-fashioned practical use, still to be found today, is the besom – birch twigs tied round a stick as a handle, good for sweeping up the leaves at this time of year.
Between Danby and Castleton, in upper Eskdale, there is a stand of birch woodland; beautiful trees, yes, and exquisite leaf-colours, now fading, but look more closely at the trunks. Those ungainly discs – what are they? Birch polypore is the formal name, but in earlier times "razor strop" because country folk used to dry it until it was really hard then use it to sharpen, or "strop", their cut-throat razors.
Very similar at a glance, but not so thick and of a pinky-fawn colour, is the birch-bracket – strong enough for a child to climb up the trunk.
A witch's broom is not a fungus in the same sense as a toadstool is; it is a freak outgrowth, which with a little imagination may resemble a birch-broom or besom. These excrescences appear on birches, as in the example shown at Hazel Head near Goathland, and only rarely on any other kind of tree.
Some abnormal stimulus – an insect, maybe, a virus, or indeed a fungus perhaps, causes a whole cluster small buds to develop very close together. Little harm is done to the tree, the timber is not affected, and other birches close by may be untouched.
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