3dRose Greeting Card Northern Flicker Male on Birch Tree, Marion County, Illinois, 6 x 6" (gc_250990_5)

the paper birch vet chillip a porifera and the betcha lacy a or birch family one of the characteristic trees of the North Woods were a colonized extensive areas after natural wildfires back in the late 1800s Early 1900s the leaves are very distinct they're ovate or oval in appearance with a sharply serrated margin and like all birches turns a beautiful golden to yellow in the fall there's another interesting feature on this sample and that's the fruit which is called a Strobel as' a cone like structure and when it breaks apart it releases hundreds of seeds that are wind dispersed which will readily colonize any disturbed landscape this is actually a boreal species it's not that common as you get further and further south the United States it's more common throughout Canada where it dominates a good portion of the dry landscape it's a fairly short-lived tree and as you get further south