Cold Weather Foraging: Birch

Reader Contribution by Leda Meredith
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Mid-winter is my favorite time to harvest birch for sweet-flavored food and warming beverages. Birch trees are easy to identify in winter thanks to their distinctive bark. The bark is an eye-catching white, or pale yellow, slashed with dark horizontal marks, and frequently found peeling off of the tree in papery strips. Older birch trees may have much darker bark, but the younger branches will still flash silvery pale hues. Check the leaf buds and you’ll find that they are alternately arranged on the twigs (in a hand-over-hand pattern rather than in pairs). Birch trees can grow from 30 to 50 feet tall, depending on the species of Betula, but are often shorter. They often grow near water.

Harvesting and Eating Birch

At this time of year, there are three ingredients I get from birch trees: tea from the twigs; a tea, spice, and flour from the inner bark; syrup from the sap.

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