Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Betula pendula
Common name
Silver Birch
Family
Betulaceae
Where found
Sometimes naturalised. Mainly tablelands. Doubtfully naturalised in the ACT. Occasionally elsewhere.
Notes
Introduced deciduous tree to about 20 m high, sometimes multistemmed. Bark smooth, silvery white, shedding in sheets, not shedding freely. In older trees, the bark thickens, becoming irregular, dark and rugged. Branchlets usually weeping, hairless, sometimes sticky. Leaves alternating down the stems, 3–7.5 cm long, 15–60 mm wide, upper surface hairless, shiny green, lower surface densely glandular; margins toothed. Male and female flowers on the same tree. Flowers with 2–4 scale-like sepals, 0 petals, in many-flowered catkins with numerous overlapping bracts, each bract subtending 3 flowers. Female catkins 10–30 mm long, 8–10 mm wide, weeping. .
VICFLORA description: https://vicflora.rbg.vic.gov.au/flora/taxon/0d2262da-8f24-44b4-8f35-3508367bdb16 (accessed 6 February 2021)
Description partly based on the Wikipedia description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betula_pendula (accessed 6 February 2021)
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