Keyed Out #067 — Betula pendula

Question 1

Its female flowers are neither solitary nor set a few together on a short stalk, but massed by the dozen into a slim spike of their own, three of them behind each small scale that hardens into a three-lobed {bract}.

Accepted Answer

birch family

Question 2

Each ripe seed is a papery two-winged disc only about 1/16 to 1/8 inch (2 to 3 mm) long, shed as the whole spike crumbles on the twig, and it is neither a capsule splitting open on cotton-tufted seed nor a single broad disc winged evenly all round.

Accepted Answer

Betulaceae

Question 3

The trunk is chalk-white and peels away in fine horizontal papery sheets, banded across with dark raised {lenticels}, rather than staying smooth and sinewy grey or shredding into narrow vertical strips.

Accepted Answer

Betula

Question 4

In its native European range the male tassels, formed the previous summer and standing bare on the shoots all winter, only lengthen and shed pollen in April as the new leaves are breaking, not in the leafless depths of midwinter nor in the first thaw weeks before any leaf stirs.

Accepted Answer

Betula

Question 5

Its young shoots are completely hairless and rough with scattered whitish resin warts, and the blades above them are hairless too, cut into sharp uneven teeth in which a set of prominent large teeth stands out from the rest.

Accepted Answer

Betula pendula

Question 6

The outermost twigs of the crown hang almost vertically in fine trailing curtains from arching branch ends, instead of standing out stiffly ascending or spreading.

Accepted Answer

Betula pendula