Yellow Birch

Size, growth and what to expect

Yellow birch grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. Expect 60 to 75 feet with a crown as wide, and wild trees occasionally reach 100 feet. Trees in the open can bear seed at 7 years, though forest trees usually start at about 40. Many live 150 years, and some pass 300.

Slender male catkins hang from the twig tips in April and May, while the small upright female catkins open with the leaves. Plump, hairy cones ripen from August to October. Ruffed grouse, redpolls, pine siskins and chickadees eat the seeds, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers feed on the sap. The leaves turn bright golden yellow in fall.

It grows wild from Newfoundland west to southeastern Manitoba, and south to northeastern Iowa, northern Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey. In the Appalachians it reaches eastern Tennessee and northeastern Georgia, mostly above 3,000 feet. Its seedlings often root on mossy logs and rotting stumps. Illinois lists it as endangered.

How to grow Yellow Birch

Yellow birch grows in full sun or part shade. Give it a cool, moist, rich soil that drains well, and it will take wet ground too. Heat, drought and packed soil stress it, so it belongs where summers stay cool. Plant it 40 feet from a wall and more than 50 feet from overhead wires, and set trees 60 feet apart.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and spread mulch over the root zone, clear of the trunk. Pick the cones in September, while they still hold together. Sow the seed at once on the surface of moist soil, barely covered, since light helps it sprout. For spring, hold it damp in the refrigerator for 4 to 8 weeks first. Shade the seedlings lightly through their first summer.

Water deeply every week through the first two summers, and in dry spells after that, since drought harms its shallow roots. A wide ring of mulch keeps the roots cool and moist. Deer, moose and snowshoe hares browse young trees, so cage them for the first few years. Prune only in summer or after leaf fall, since a birch cut in late winter or spring bleeds sap.

Male and female catkins grow on the same tree and the wind carries the pollen. A lone tree sets some seed with its own pollen, but a second yellow birch nearby improves the crop. Good seed crops come every 2 or 3 years. It resists the bronze birch borer better than most birches, but the borer can kill a tree weakened by heat, drought or injury. Birch skeletonizers and leaf miners damage the leaves in some years, and Nectria canker can scar the trunk. Ice and heavy snow can break its fine branches. It tolerates black walnut.