Botany: cherry birch identification
Self-tutoring about tree identification: the tutor mentions cherry birch.
Waiting last week at an office, I gazed out the window, where a tree drew my attention.
The tree had a few familiar features; never had I seen them in the same tree. It looked like a birch, but was it? The bark was bronze, perhaps even red. Yet, it had that sideways grooving a birch has.
I can’t recall seeing a birch with bark that colour. In fact, its trunk and bark reminded me of a cherry tree, yet its flowers were catkins rather than blossoms.
Identifying a tree can be very difficult, especially when you see it from a distance and only once. I searched the internet and decided the tree in question must be a birch – but which kind? I concluded it wasn’t one native here.
I looked at cherry birch a few times. Finally I noticed the comparison to cherry bark, and its identity crystallized: I believe the tree to be cherry birch.
Cherry birch isn’t native here but is a known landscape tree.
Source:
Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.