Beithe or Birch
The silver tree
With its papery, peeling
bark and dark diamond-shaped markings, birch is very
distinctive. Birch needs a lot of light and its silvery showers of
leaves flicker in the sunshine. The whiteness in its bark
is due to the tiny grains of
betulin, a crystal in the bark cells. Its dark purple
twigs easily bend to the wind, and its leaves are small and triangular.
A pioneer
Birch is a
pioneering tree, which means it is the first tree to grow on rocks, in sand or on moorland. Its
shallow roots only need a few
minerals which come from
the many fungi and lichens that grow around it. Although its wood is tough and bends easily, birch rots quickly once dead,
which is good for insects such as beetle larvae that eat it, which in turn are important to
the many birds living around the birch tree.
Building with bark
Birch bark is very durable, and has been used for thousands of years to make boats, canoes, roof tiles (called shingles), buckets and shoes. It contains birch tar, which makes it burn easily. A Russian proverb says the Birch gives light
(its bark is rolled for torches), calms screams (birch tar was smeared on cart wheels),
heals (used as a cream on the body) and cleanses (its branches
are used in saunas).
Blood healer
Tea can be made from the young birch leaves, and birch sap stimulates kidneys to help the metabolism clean the blood. The Ojibwa Native Americans used birch in sweat lodge cleansing ceremonies. Birch wood is used for bobbins, spools and reels, brooms, carving, haddock-smoking, firebeaters, and even witches broomsticks! (actually ‘witches broom’, which looks like nests hanging in birch trees. It is caused by a fungus and sparrows sometimes use them as nests.)
Birch tar oil
Bircha means ‘shining white’ in german.
Silver birch has the latin name of betula pendula (hence betulin). Birch bark was used for writing on, for tanning leather, and its sap is still tapped from the tree in early April for sugar, beer and wine. Birch leaves are antiseptic and good for muscle pains, while birch tar, made from the fresh wood, makes an ointment for skin or used as a mouthwash called ‘oil of birch tar’
The Birch in mythology
The wild stag-god
An antlered god called Cernunnos appears in a bronze panel on the danish Gundestrup Cauldron, where he holds a ram-headed snake in one hand,
with wolf and stag to either side. He has a ring, or torc,
held in his right hand. Like the Green Man of Knowledge, Cernunnos belongs to
wild places, where he is a guardian spirit.
Dancing tree
Many festivities are associated
with birch groves, or groups of birches. A few hundred years ago the
birch tree was brought into the village, decorated colourfully and a
spring festival held around it at Beltane (May 1st), and so the maypole first appeared in the
thirteenth century. It meant lots of dancing for young adults!
Customs in northern lands
In Siberia (northern Russia), birch is called the 'deity of the door' and helps shamans (spirit healers) to cross into the spirit world. Small conical
birch bark hats were found in the graves of german chieftans, while a germanic rune,
berkana, meant motherhood and protection, because its shape - like a B - represents the breasts of Mother Earth.
Birth & birch
In India the earliest
versions of the Vedas were written on birch bark, while in the Jewish Kabbalah,
beth meant understanding that which 'opens creative power'. In Ireland, beithe/ birch was called the 'mother of learning' and began the alphabet. The celtic god Lug (of the Long
Arm) was warned that his wife was about to be taken to the underworld in a carving on a birch tree. Cradles made
of birch protected babies from becoming changelings (humans swapped with fairy creatures), and birch brooms were hung up by the roof or above the
door as charm to keep away spirits.