stripping the bark: is it safe for the tree?

[2trapper]

Dear all,
I'm experimenting the many uses of birch bark. Birch is quite rare in my country and I'm looking for its proper use and also its proper preservation. The question is about stripping the bark from living trees? Is it safe? Is there a proper technique or approach? Any advice? I attach a picture for this purpose

 

[Mesquite]

Have a read of this thread about what happens when you take bark from a live tree...

 

[2trapper]

Yes, I know about that, but the question is specific for birch, for an incomplete ring and only involving the outer bark (the part that will naturally be peeled off). In Canada several native nations strip the bark longitudinally without harming the tree. I was wandering about birch and the potential harm done without reaching the cork cambium, if one might occur).

 

[Mesquite]

Yes, I know about that, but the question is specific for birch, for an incomplete ring and only involving the outer bark (the part that will naturally be peeled off). In Canada several native nations strip the bark longitudinally without harming the tree. I was wandering about birch and the potential harm done without reaching the cork cambium, if one might occur).

The thread I linked you to was specifically about how taking bark from a birch tree can leave lasting damage. Taking the wispy bits that have naturally come away from the tree won't harm it but when you start using a knife to do it you start to endanger the bark and the tree itself.

In your picture you have used a knife to cut score marks deep into the bark and you've also exposed the cambium layer as well... those marks will stay with the tree virtually for life.

Upshot is don't take it from a living tree when there's plenty of dead trees that you can do it without harm.

 

[HillBill]

As with all trees, the cambium layer is what you want to avoid damaging. Birch bark is thin, making it easy to damage the cambium. Especially when using a knife.

 

[2trapper]

Thanks for the explanation. You got the point.

 

[Robson Valley]

The outermost bark is normally very poor quality to work with. The inner layers that I see on that tree trunk is much better quality but the risk of damaging the bark cambium is much higher. Vertical knife cuts do much less damage than horizontal cuts. It's also possible that your birch species is not our birch species (Betula papyrifera) which lends itself to serious harvesting.

Other than tapping for sap to make syrup, I see bark stripping as a cosmetic insult to both the tree and to anyone passing by. Sometimes I get lucky and can harvest bark from birch cut as firewood. As a rule, I won't wander through a forest, hacking at the birch trees for any reason.

 

[Janne]

If you only take that much, the tree will not get harmed. But be careful not to cut through the inner layer ( cambium) down to the wood, as this can damage or even kill the tree. A pathway for infections and insects.
Birch bark is amazing, very leather like.
In the old days they used it to make containers, shoes, hats. Of course, it burns very well, and the foil thin outer layers are a superior fire starter!

 

[Toddy]

There's another point, that Robson Valley touched upon. Birch in warmer, temperate climates, does not grow thick bark that can be stripped without seriously compromising the tree.
In areas with deep hard cold in Winter the tree does grow much thicker bark. That's why areas such as North America, Scandinavia and Russia have a history of bark use.
Only in a few limited areas in the UK do the trees develop thicker bark. I have no idea about the birch in Italy, 2Trapper.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

Sorry, I didn't make it clear. There are 2 sorts of cambium in woody stems. The main one is the vascular cambium. The division products eventually differentiate as secondary xylem (aka wood) and secondary phloem, to the outside. In older, outer annual layers of secondary phloem, a second differentiation often occurs which shows as several to many layers of waxy/suberinized layers to effectively seal the stem. You see this as overlapping, flaky, patchy scales of bark on conifer tree trunks. By contrast in Birch species, the layering is quite synchronous, all around the stem.
While the birch building native communities of eastern North America made canoes of patched pieces of birch bark, there are modern examples on the internet of the entire canoe made from a single, stripped tree trunk. Might as well whack the tree, you need wood for ribs, thwarts, seats. You need wood for pack frames and snowshoe frames.
The so-called "Mocotaugan" crooked knife is well designed for these tasks.

 

[tsitenha]

Go back to the tree a year later, see the results.

 

[MegaWoodsWalker]

I take only the hanging bark like so.





For larger sections fallen trees are just fine. The bark doesn't easily go bad.







For me I just don't see any reason to hack at a tree for this. That said I am only talking about me, not anyone else and if it were a matter of survival all bets are off.

 

[C_Claycomb]

If the trees are rare in your part of the world my opinion is that no level of damage is acceptable or justifiable. If you want to learn to use birch bark as a material, get on a plane and fly north to where it is common and the bark will be thick enough to use. The difference between the bark we found on trees in the Telemark area of Norway, compared to those growing in southern England was astonishing. I had never understood how you could make things with bark, based on the bark available in my part of the UK.

The land we were on in Norway belonged to the family of the person we were with, and he regularly took bark for projects. There were a number of trees so marked around his family's holiday cottage. Although his taking the (thick) bark had not killed the tree, the trees never grew back their original bark. What grew where the white bark was removed was black and fissured, like scar tissue. There were lots of birch and they had little commercial value other than as firewood so no one was bothered that some had bark taken. If they were rare, and other people might like to see them growing, then scarring them does not seem like responsible custodianship.

 

[santaman2000]

If the trees are rare in your part of the world my opinion is that no level of damage is acceptable or justifiable. If you want to learn to use birch bark as a material, get on a plane and fly north to where it is common.......

North? Birch was the single most common tree among the ones I had destroyed by Hurricane Katrina on my land in Mississippi. It's also extremely common here inFlorida.

 

[Toddy]

It's both commoner, and with thicker bark, in the North though, Santaman.
It's a 'pioneer species'. I have howked hundreds of them out of threatened bogs and upland mosses, and thousands more out of every blooming planter and space between slabs and stepstones in the garden.
Lovely trees, useful trees, but a damned weed at times.

M

 

[C_Claycomb]

Santanaman,

I was referring to finding trees with bark thick enough to make the things which are usually associated with birch bark craft. I would not know what sort of birch you have in the southern US, but even if it does not follow the same growth pattern to the European Silver Birch (thicker bark where winters are colder), Italy is closer to Norway than it is to Florida

 

[Robson Valley]

I've been reading accounts of the eastern north america native cultures in connection with a crooked knife design referred to as the Mocotaugan crooked knife. The blades were made in Sheffield and traded by the barrel by the Hudson's Bay Company as far back as 1750, perhaps even earlier.
I have one such blade, albeit of much more modern manufacture, thanks to Tombear.
These peoples fit into a broader group sometimes referred to as the "birch building society." It's true = birch (Betula papyrifera) was their multipurpose tree.
Without personal inspection, I can believe that the bark thickness is far greater than in other Betula species. There's lots of it in my district in the wet sites which our local conifers don't tolerate. This is the ICH = Interior Cedar Hemlock biogeoclimatic zone. As posted above, it's rarely harvested as construction wood, primarily in land clearing and that for firewood.
Must admit that I've carved enough of it to admire the uniform consistency and ability to hold detail.
Easiest for me to drive around the village and stop to ask if I can take the bark from firewood piles!
Just about as easily taken as from fresh logs.

 

[santaman2000]

It's both commoner, and with thicker bark, in the North though, Santaman.
It's a 'pioneer species'. I have howked hundreds of them out of threatened bogs and upland mosses, and thousands more out of every blooming planter and space between slabs and stepstones in the garden.
Lovely trees, useful trees, but a damned weed at times.

M

Wonderful lumber too; we managed to salvage about $35,000 worth from the blowdown after Katrina (and they only salvaged the very easiest to get to) The point about it being as weed in the wrong place is very valid; also true of most plants TBH.

Santanaman,

I was referring to finding trees with bark thick enough to make the things which are usually associated with birch bark craft. I would not know what sort of birch you have in the southern US, but even if it does not follow the same growth pattern to the European Silver Birch (thicker bark where winters are colder), Italy is closer to Norway than it is to Florida

Yeah there's a fair number of different species with different traits.

 

[Robson Valley]

Just in case you would like to go from the simple to the sublime and complex.
Google "birch bark biting" to see an exquisite art form which has very few practiconers any more.

 

[moorcraft]

Ifyou can peel it by hand, that is what mother is giving you for fire and warmth. A downed tree by wind is up for grabs but make someting useful. Match holder, tar, canoe. And if you do slit it drink it. Booya!