Betula lenta
Black Birch
Black Birch is also known as Sweet Birch for its sweet sap and the pleasant wintergreen-like taste of its inner bark and twigs. This birch has thrived recently, inhabiting and growing in areas once home to the American Chestnut. Like many trees, its bark changes substantially over time and shifts from a deep dark red in its youth to charcoal gray with loose scaly plates as it matures. Some may mistake the bark for a cherry, but if you’re looking at the tree in the winter and see weeping catkins (the male flowering structures) then you’re looking at a birch. With the right conditions, this tree can live for more than two centuries.