A few more birches of note
In Sichuan Betula luminifera is the common species at low altitude, where it is a widespread pioneer and something of a weed, colonising roadsides and any patch of bare earth, whether due to human activity or natural erosion. Its stem is not at all decorative, a nondescript brownish grey with a few lenticels. B. luminifera…
Birches: the UK’s ‘lady of the woods’ has some handsome Asiatic consorts
Coleridge referred to Betula pendula as ‘most beautiful of forest trees, the lady of the woods’. Its elegance, pendulous grace and white stems make it one of the most loved of Britain’s native trees. A low December sun, picking out the delicate tracery of its fine twigs, and highlighting the white bark running up into the top…
Widespread in the wild, scarcely known in cultivation: Rosa sericea
Rosa sericea is probably the most widespread rose species in Asia, both geographically and in terms of altitude. It is found throughout the Himalaya from Nepal in the west across to SE Tibet and NE India in the east, into Burma and through Yunnan and Sichuan into central and southern China and north into Kansu and…
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