When I was on the N Sask and now up in Anchorage I have envied the lack of parasitic dammage to the Native Birch and wondered if it is Genetics, Lack of parasitic bugs, or just a shortened growing cycle that preserves these trees in such good form?
Oh great northen brothers and sisters, a Birch Question.
*blink blink*
(sorry Sofer, wish I could help you out but I'm not that smart!)
Sandy
Soferdig ..
Here in Thunder Bay we have lost beautiful birch from Birch Leaf Miner .. the treatment here USED to be Cygon .. but that has been taken off the market ..
So sad to see a gorgeous ages old birch turning brown and having to be cut down :-(
~*M*~
yes that is what we need to do here is inject residue insecticide into the tree. That is why I have not selected it as a specimen in my garden. Well I will just have to try it and see.
I treat Birch trees with Merit for miner and borer at work, it works - maybe costly for a yearly treatment though. Hi Steve ;)~
Hi Al. Well I think that if a species cannot do what survival of the fittest wants, it should disappear. ( I am reading "Origin of species") . LOL But seriously we need to be selecting a tree that will survive the oncoming insect take over of our planet. I was thinking that these Alaskans might be the ones.
It's been my experience that birches have a shorter life span than other trees. Is that because of the bugs? who knows.
We did have a large birch in our front yard when we purchased the house 17 years ago, but about 10 years ago the birch finally gave up. Didn't observe any bug damage, just a large dead tree...... It had split in two from the fork in the trunk..
I can't blame you for trying. I do believe a white birch here and a white birch there is still a white birch - that's in Plato's tree book I think.
There used to be one in every lawn around here in the 70's. Borers can smell weak trees. I really wouldn't plant one.
the birch along the river have pretty short life spans; the ones we try to keep on our trim little yards around here suffer greatly from birch leaf minor. had a neighbour once who had a dead birch in the yard for several years and use to say that in our climate you could only tell it was dead for 4 months of the year LOL
But I saw some might big birch 8 to 10" diameter and over 60' tall along the mighty N. Sask. and none of them had tree tops denuded like here.
In my experience .. birch will split in VERY cold temps .. not that we have had much of that here the last 2 years .. our Sugar Bush Maples also split .
But .. we'll keep on planting them as there are some on the property that are years and years old .. their enemy these days is Pilated Woodpeckers and Flickers !!!
Some folks mistake Poplars for Birch in this area as they are quite similar ..
~*M*~
I always see the woodpeckers and Flickers as cleaning up on dying or dead trees here. Though in paperbark birch I suppose they eat a lot of emerging bugs from the spring hatch.
