Outstanding Features:
Clean, glossy green foliage and clear yellow fall color.

Description:
Height: 35-50'
Width: 20-40'
Hardiness Zone: 3b

Sweet Birch is a little known tree that has excellent potential for landscape use. It has an upright pyramidal form when young, becoming rounded with age. Foliage is an attractive clean medium green and develops an outstanding clear yellow fall color. The smooth bark of young trees is dark reddish brown to nearly black and has prominent horizontal lenticels, resembling cherry bark. The twigs have a distinctive wintergreen odor when bruised. It is resistant to bronze birch borer, an insect pest which frequently damages white barked birches. Sweet Birch is native to the eastern United States.

Requirements and Culture:
Prefers a good loam soil and needs ample soil moisture. Full sun or partial shade. Do not prune in spring since excessive sap bleeding can occur.

Limitations:
Not readily available in the nursery trade. Sometimes susceptible to stem cankers.

Photo Credit: 1 & 2 E. Hasselkus.

Minnesota Power | University of Minnesota | Northern States Power Company

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