Return to Native Trees of the Southern Rocky Mountains

Water birch is a common large shrub or small tree found along stream sides, in mountain valleys and canyons from 5000 to 9500 feet elevation. It is usually associated with alder, cottonwoods, willows, and Boxelder.

Water birch usually grows as several stems in a clump to 25 feet high; individual trunk diameter is usually 6 inches or less, but rarely reaches 12 inches. This birch has distinctive glossy reddish-brown bark with white horizontal marks. Flowers appear in May and June.

At first glance this waterside shrub appears similar to the Mountain Alder, but the leaves are smaller, the glossy red-brown bark is distinctive, and this tree lacks the Alder's miniature hard pine-cone-like fruit. The birch's fruit is a little cone-like, but it is more cylindrical, not so not hard and woody, and it rapidly disintegrates. Water birch is well-rooted and can withstand repeated floods.

Indians made bows and arrows of birch wood. Pioneers used used the wood for fence posts and fuel. The leaves and twigs are browsed only moderately by mule deer and elk, chiefly in winter for lack of other food, but numerous birds eat the buds and seeds and hummingbirds eat sap from holes in the bark left by sapsuckers. Beavers make lodges and dams from birch stems. The scientific name is Betula fontinalis, birch of the fountain.

Leaves: 1 to 2 inches long; 3/4 inch to 1 inch wide; finely toothed, sometimes doubly toothed. leaf stalk thick and 1/5 to 3/4 inch long. Leaf shape is similar to Mountain alder leaves (they are both part of the birch family), but leaves are only half as large.

Stems: twigs rough and warty.

Bark: smooth, bright glossy reddish-brown, sometimes with a hint of purple; some grayish cast in spots or occasionally a dark dusty gray. The pronounced long horizontal chalky-white corky streaks are lenticels, breathing pores. Bark on very old dead limbs can be peeled off like typical birch bark, but otherwise the bark does not peel well. Do not try to peel bark from a living branch since loss of bark may kill the stem.