Betula nigra – River Birch

River Birch is valued for its cinnamon-brown peeling bark and resistance to bronze birch borer, a beetle that kills European and Asian white birches. It may be grown as a single-stem tree, as a multi-stem tree with 2 or more trunks from a single base, or in clump form, with 2 or more individual trees growing separately but near to each other. Although usually found next to water courses in the wild, this tree will perform well on fairly dry sites if watered well until it establishes a deep root system. Cold hardy through zone 4, perhaps even colder, so perfectly happy throughout the Catskills, though, typically we see river birch growing wild only in our valleys, rarely at higher elevations where it is replaced by yellow, black and paper birches.