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river birch tree
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Name: sandra
Email: happycooki78@yahoo.com
Where are river birch trees commonly found? It is for a science project and am having a hard time finding the answer.
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3 Responses to “river birch tree”
March 9th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Dear Sandra,
I am assuming that you are asking either what the habitat of the river birch is or what its geographic range is. The typical habitat is floodplain and river banks, soils that are seasonally inundated. You can find a brief description of the tree and its habitats on vPlants:
http://vplants.org/plants/species/species.jsp?gid=4936
As a typical floodplain species, river birch tolerates wet, clayey soils. As for the geographic distribution, there is a very nice map on the Flora of North America website:
http://www.efloras.org/object_page.aspx?object_id=5749&flora_id=1
I hope this helps. Take care,
Andrew
March 11th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
According the Michael Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, “the native habitat for river birch is found from Massachusetts to Florida wet to Minnesota and Kansas. It is restricted to stream banks and other moist places.” A good map showing the habitat range can be found on the USFS webite:
http://na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/betula/nigra.htm
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:22 am
Maybe a more specific answer to your question is that River Birch is native to Illinois, although south of the Chicagoland area. It is grown a lot around here and is a better choice than European White Birch. It tends to have problems up here with our soil not being acidic enough and it is prone to girdling roots.