Catkins

I had read about catkins as an attribute used in winter identification, so when I was walking at Peebles Island on April 2, I was excited to find a tree that had them.

Today, I looked in my tree books.  I learned that trees that have winter catkins are birch, hop hornbeam, and alder.   I concluded that the tree in the above photos seems to resemble sweet birch (also known as black birch or cherry birch).  I did some reading about birches and then went to Peebles Island again today.  I observed the same tree I had photographed two weeks ago and observed more carefully the pattern of the catkins.  There tend to be two catkins right on the end, a third just behind those two, and sometimes a fourth behind the third.  I also read today that older sweet birch trees have scaly bark, and I noticed trees with the same type of catkins that had scaly bark.  Another thing I had read was that the twigs smell and taste of wintergreen.  I broke off a twig from one of the trees.  I didn't notice any smell, but after a little bit of chewing, I got the wintergreen flavor.

I saw many of these sweet birches around Peebles Island, especially on the top of the cliff, above the river.  There were often hemlocks nearby, closer to the river, more on the side of the cliff than the top.