Seattle Tours

In the postings of April 19 and April 26, I mentioned how I collected and made medicine from cottonwood and alder trees. My next target was birch. I was lumping birch trees with alder and cottonwood for several reasons: botanically, because birch and alder are in the same family (Betulaceae); ecologically, because they are found in similar environments, namely wet and disturbed ones; and medicinally, because they all have analgesic properties. I could have made willow the third of the triad for basically the same reasons, but I already have a ton of willow tincture left from years ago.

Specifically, with birch it is the bark that is used as an analgesic, for headaches and arthritis. The leaves have other properties, but I only harvested bark. The bark can be made into a tincture or put into rubbing alcohol for a liniment. Or, a decoction can be made of the bark, and can be used externally or internally. The bark’s properties come from the presence of betulin, betulinic acid and methyl salicylate.

In Seattle there are no natural/wild stands of native birch. Most birch you see are (european) white birch; there are also some landscaped paper birch. The paper birch is native to this region, but it turns out that the southern end of its range is just north of here. So to look for it, I took public transit back to Bellingham and rode around the countryside near Gooseberry Point and the Lummi Reservation. This is a low-lying area influenced by the Nooksack River, which drains into the sea here. Cottonwood and alder were ubiquitous. There were some huge monotypic patches of cottonwood, all the same age, which likely generated after a large flood in 1990.

The birch was difficult to find: here or there I encountered an individual or three. While the bark was peeling, it was more exfoliating than peeling in large strips like i remembered. It was also much darker bark than I remebered, though for certain it was birch.

Turns out that what I was seeing was a different species of birch -- water birch, Betula occidentalis and not papery Betula papyrifera. Or it could have been a naturally occuring hybrid of the two, since it is reportedly common for them to interbreed.

Below you see the trunk bark and the leaves of water birch.