>>2616783oh man they are beautiful trees, but they are notoriously precious. they fall over in heavy winds and they are out-competed by ever other native tree. on my family's 14 acres, which was a young reclaimed forest 50 years ago, we had small forests of paper birch, and as a kid growing up in those woods we still had groves of them. my dad even kept a few around the house when he first built it in the 70s,
almost all of them have fallen and died now, even the groves in the woods. we still have quite a few but we're talking maybe 20 healthy white birch trees in 2023 as opposed to maybe 300 in 1990.
pic is recent, one of the birches deep in the woods that I remember vividly as a child, and which has since fallen down in a hurricane.
I peeled most of the bark off and burned because why waste it. BTW paper birch burns like oil, flares up quickly and puts off thick bitter black smoke that'll destroy any nearby mosquitoes but also ruin your food if you're foolish enough to cook over that shit
