Water Birch

The Betula Nigra is commonly known as Black Birck, Red Birch, River Birch, as well as Water Birch

< Go Back

Growing Regions

River birch is found throughout the southeastern United States; local distributions are closely associated with alluvial soils. It is found from southern New York, eastern Pennsylvania, and Maryland west to eastern Indiana; north in the Mississippi Valley to Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota; south to Missouri, Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, and eastern Texas; and east to northern Florida [21,22]. The distribution of river birch within this range excludes the Appalachian mountains, upland areas in central Tennessee and Kentucky, south-central Missouri, and the lower Mississippi Valley from southeastern Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico [21,22]. Locations of disjunct populations as reported by Little [22] include northeastern Massachussetts/southeastern New Hampshire, western New York, northern Ohio, northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and south-central Minnesota. In a study to determine the status of these disjunct populations, Coyle and others [5] confirmed the northeastern Massachussetts/southeastern New Hampshire population and three other naturally reproducing river birch populations outside of the main distribution: extreme western North Carolina, eastern Kansas, and northwestern Indiana.

     

General Information

The currently accepted scientific name for river birch is Betula nigra L. [22,35]. There are no accepted subspecies, varieties, or forms.

River birch is found in virtually every bottomland cover type, and its
associates can be considered almost all bottomland plants in the
eastern United States [13].

River birch is named as an overstory dominant, codominant, or
indicator species in the following publications:

 1. The natural forests of Maryland: an explanation of the vegetation map of
      Maryland [3]
 2. Forest vegetation of the lower Alabama Piedmont [11]
 3. Land classification in the Blue Ridge province: state-of-the-      
      science report [23]
 4. Southern swamps and marshes [25]
 5. Classification and evaluation of forest sites in the Cumberland
      Mountains [29]
 6. Classification and evaluation of forest sites on the Natchez Trace
      State Forest, State Resort Park, and Wildlife Managemant Area in west
      Tennessee [30]
 7. Plant communities of the Coastal Plain of North Carolina and their
      successional relations [38]

• More Water Birch Information

< Go Back