Description: Shrub or small tree with rounded crown of spreading and drooping branches; usually forming clumps and often in thickets.

Height: 7.5m

Diameter: 15-30cm

Leaves: 2.5-5cm long, 2-2.5cm wide. Ovate, sharply and often doubly saw-toothed, usually with four to five veins on each side. Dark green above, pale yellow-green with tiny gland-dots beneath; turning dull yellow in autumn.

Bark: Shiny, dark reddish-brown, smooth with horizontal lines, not peeling.

Shoots: Greenish, slender, with gland-dots and very resinous.

Flowers: Tiny; in early spring. Male yellowish, with two stamens, many in long, drooping catkins near tip of twigs. Female greenish in short, upright catkins back from tip of same twig.

Cones: 2.5-3 cm long; cylindrical, brownish, upright or spreading on slender stalk; with many two-winged nutlets; maturing in late summer.

Habitat: Moist soils along streams in mountain canyons; usually in coniferous forests and with cottonwoods and willows. California plnat communities: Yellow Pine Forest (m14), Red Fir Forest (m15), Lodgepole Pine Forest (m16) and North Coastal Coniferous Forest (m10)

Range: NE British Columbia east to S Manitoba and south to N New Mexico and California; at 600-2500m.

This uncommon but widespread species is the only native birch in the Southwest and the southern Rocky Mountains. Sheep and goats browse the foliage. Introduced to Kew in 1897 where it thrives as a graceful small tree.

Betula ×utahensis: There are significant populations of this natural hybrid between B. papyrifera and B. fontinalis. Bark is pink-brown, peeling or flaky. Autumn colour is very good. Height and other characters intermediate between parents.

Information: Audubon (1980), Bean I (1976), Stone Lane Gardens

Sources: Stone Lane Gardens, Chagford, Devon - at the edge of Dartmoor; Our own seed collections in Utah, 1995.

Purchased: 1993.11.04. Three at c 1m, provenance Charlo (N of Missoula), Montana

Also two B. × utahensis, about 1.2m, provenances: one from N of Kalispell N of Missoula, W Montana, one from Lochsa Valley, Idaho.

Planted: 1993.11.06, one near orchard gate (B62B), one near old fenceline in south end of US strip (B2E), and one by diagonal fence of US area large triangle (C9A). Latter two died 1994 and 1995 respectively. B. × utahensis: Montana one near north end of US strip (B58C), Idaho one between B. papyrifera and B. fontinalis by fence of south triangle (C6A/B).

We have several trees grown from our own seed (collector's ref. A&MW 95/39, Lower Calf Creek, Utah) which are hardened off and in large pots ready to be planted (the photo of bark above is of the parent tree from which seed was collected).

Progress: B. fontinalis (B62B) reached 3.1 m, 1998.10.07 but this tree is starting to grow badly off vertical; there are some shoots from the base (this species is often multi-trunked in the wild) and I am thinking of coppicing out the main trunk over winter 2004. B. × utahensis (B58C, a rather shaded, dry site), 2.0 m on same date, and 4.9m still growing straight up towards the canopy of a large sycamore on 2004.09.27; B. × utahensis (C6A) was rather bigger in 1998, and is 6.4m on 2004.09.27, but despite its unshaded site has grown quite crooked, though vertical overall.

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