Betula nigra. a. Tip of branch, b. Leaf. c. Pistillate catkin, f. Nutlet with bract. e. Bract. Drawn by Vivian Frazier. From Correll and Correll 1972.

Muskogee) [black, red, river, water] birch (from Old English here or beorc); sugar

birch (Quebec, recorded by Kalm [1753-1761] 1972) lokapí (Koasati); opahaksun (Choctaw) onàget (Onondaga) yap koko’ha (tree breaks brittle, Catawba)

Birch trees were important to all European cultures, having names in Latin, Greek Hebrew, and Gaelic. It was beith, the white birch (Betula alba) that formed the first letter of the old Gaelic alphabet (Dwelly 1933). The dwarf birch, B. nana, was known as beith bhog, and formed the letter “P” in the Gaelic alphabet. Gaelic expressions included, “Beith, luis, nuin” the equivalent of “A, B, C” in English, as a euphemism for alphabet. The expression ’Sa bheith chubhraidh means “in the fragrant birch,” and the Buchanan clan had the tree as their badge. Four-time winner of the Pulitzer prize for poetry Robert Frost was a newcomer to admiration of Betula when he published a collection of poetry including the poem “Birches” in 1915 (Frost 1992).