River Birch Walk Traditional Cache
chimps8mybaby: Too dangerous
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(regular)
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Please be aware of hunters and wear orange during deer season. Parking is available on Childress Road. From the parking spot to the cache is approx. .89 miles. This is a nice level walk along Greasy Creek. Deer, turkeys, and ducks abound. The trees in this bottomland are awesome. You will be looking for a camoed lock-n-lock.
River Birch - Betula nigra
The river birch is a large deciduous tree, growing 90 feet in height and spreading 30 to 50 feet. It grows at a medium to rapid rate, 30 to 40 feet over a 20-year period. It lives only 30 to 40 years on many urban sites, possibly due to a shortage of water. River birches situated in moist areas live longer.
The river birch is native to the American midwest and southeast, and is among landscape trees recommended by many experts.
Birch grows in climates ranging from boreal to humid and tolerates wide variations in precipitation. Its northern limit of growth is arctic Canada and Alaska, in boreal spruce woodlands, in mountain and sub alpine forests of the western United States, the Great Plains, and in coniferous - deciduous forests of the Northeast and Great Lakes states.
Unlike other kinds of birch tree, the fruits of the River Birch mature in the spring following flowering. The trunk of this tree often is short, branching into several large limbs that grow upward. The bark of younger trees is pinkish to reddish brown. When older it is shaggy and silver-gray to black. The River Birch favors moist soils and typically is found growing on stream banks and in swampy lowlands. In her book on The Woody Plants of Ohio, Lucy Braun calls this a "semi-aquatic species" since it can survive flooding for several weeks at a time. This tree grows throughout most of the eastern United States and westward to eastern Oklahoma and eastern Texas. It is more common in the South, where it is the only birch tree that is found at low titleitudes. although not of great commercial importance, manufacturers sometimes use it for furniture and woodenware. It also is planted for its ornamental value and is very effective in preventing stream bank erosion.
Separate male and female flowers are borne on the same tree; the male in the form of a catkin, and the female in cone-like clusters that fall from the tree and are blown for long distances by the wind. In the fall, the foliage turns pale yellow.
Native Americans used the boiled sap as a sweetener similar to maple syrup, and the inner bark as a survival food
Harvested in early spring, before the leaves unfurl. The trunk is tapped by drilling a hole about 6mm wide and about 4cm deep. The sap flows best on warm sunny days following a hard frost. It makes a refreshing drink and can also be concentrated into a syrup or sugar. The sap can be fermented to make birch beer or vinegar. An old English recipe for the beer is as follows:-
"To every Gallon of Birch-water put a quart of Honey, well stirr'd together; then boil it almost an hour with a few Cloves, and a little Limon-peel, keeping it well scumm'd. When it is sufficiently boil'd, and become cold, add to it three or four Spoonfuls of good Ale to make it work...and when the Test begins to settle, bottle it up . . . it is gentle, and very harmless in operation within the body, and exceedingly sharpens the Appetite, being drunk ante pastum."
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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