River Birch

Betula nigra, river birch, is a North American native named for its natural habitat along riverbanks and floodplains from the Upper Midwest south to the Gulf Coast and east to New England. Its bark is the standout feature — young trunks peel in curling, papery sheets of salmon-pink, cinnamon, and gray-brown, a display that holds year-round and is especially striking on the widely planted multi-stem 'Heritage' cultivar. Small, inconspicuous wind-pollinated catkins appear in early spring, and the diamond-shaped leaves turn butter-yellow in fall.

Unlike the other North American birches, river birch shrugs off heat and humidity, making it the birch of choice for the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and warmer zones where paper birch and gray birch struggle — and it is also the most naturally resistant of the birches to bronze birch borer, largely because it isn't drought- and heat-stressed the way its cooler-climate relatives are further south. It tolerates wet, poorly drained soil and periodic flooding better than almost any other landscape tree, but also adapts well to average garden soil so long as it isn't allowed to dry out completely. Some chlorosis (yellowing between leaf veins) can appear in high-pH soil; keep it on the acidic side for the deepest green foliage.