Birch trees?

[Eddy]

Anyone worked with any types of birch? I’ve been looking into making a white paper birch forest. Or any birch for that matter. Love the paper peeling bark etc. how long does it take to achieve that bark? Good for bonsai? Etc. all info would help.

 

[0soyoung]

The knock on birch is that they tend to capriciously drop branches. This wouldn't be much of a problem with a forest planting, so I recommend you try it. I've had a bunch of volunteer seedlings in small pots for a couple of years now - they do just fine, but I don't see any significant leaf size reduction.

 

[Eddy]

The knock on birch is that they tend to capriciously drop branches. This wouldn't be much of a problem with a forest planting, so I recommend you try it. I've had a bunch of volunteer seedlings in small pots for a couple of years now - they do just fine, but I don't see any significant leaf size reduction.

What type of birch do you have?

 

[0soyoung]

Paper birch (Betula papapyrifera). I have a triple trunk clump in my landscape (20 or so years old). I'm growing some volunteers from it.

 

[Josh88]

This white birch won best deciduous in the 2016 nationals, and is owned and developed by Dennis Vojtilla, a member of the Bonsai Society of Portland. He talks a little bit about it’s development on a Mirai podcast, and he explained that birch, along with some other species prone to dieback and losing branches, can be developed well by letting new growth extend only to four or five leaves, and then cutting back to one. As I understand his explanation, letting the branches run long causes these trees to abandon growth closer to the trunk, so even though development takes much longer this way, he does not experience much dieback and random branch loss. He has fantastic deciduous trees in his collection, and some species not often used for bonsai, such as grape. It’s a podcast that is certainly worth a listen, and he gives some interesting bits of info from his years of developing beautiful deciduous trees.

 

[Ingvill]

Very interesting, I'm definetly gonna try his way.