Betula ermaniiCham.

Erman's BirchStone Birch

WFO wfo-0000332440 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Betula ermanii, photographed by Николай Соболев
fig. a Николай Соболев, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-09-29 / obs. 106201862
Betula ermanii, photographed by Николай Соболев
fig. b Николай Соболев, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105968950
Betula ermanii, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. c Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 90210655
Betula ermanii, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. d Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52384981
Betula ermanii, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. e Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52386238
Betula ermanii, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. f Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52377877
Betula ermanii, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. g Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 50675457
Betula ermanii, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. h Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 50673796

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 16 botanical countries

Regions where Betula ermanii is native: Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Korea, Kuril Is., Magadan, Manchuria, Primorye, Sakhalin, Yakutiya AmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKamchatkaKhabarovskMagadanManchuriaPrimoryeSakhalinYakutiya Korea
Native distribution of Betula ermanii, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Amur AMU ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Kuril Is. KUR
Magadan MAG
Manchuria CHM
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Yakutiya YAK

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 689 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -21.0 °C -13.8 °C -8.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 13.9 °C 16.1 °C 20.9 °C
Annual rainfall 800 mm 1,344 mm 2,835 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 93 mm 227 mm 351 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 689 research-grade observations of Betula ermanii that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 37 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Betula bhojpattra var. japonica Shirai
  • Betula ermanii f. brachystachys Popov
  • Betula ermanii f. corticosa (Nakai) Sugim.
  • Betula ermanii f. ganjuensis (Koidz.) T.Shimizu
  • Betula ermanii f. nipponica (Maxim.) Koidz.
  • Betula ermanii subsp. lanata (Regel) A.K.Skvortsov
  • Betula ermanii subvar. brevidentata C.K.Schneid.
  • Betula ermanii var. acutifolia H.J.P.Winkl.
  • Betula ermanii var. communis Koidz.
  • Betula ermanii var. corticosa Nakai
  • Betula ermanii var. ganjuensis (Koidz.) Nakai
  • Betula ermanii var. genuina Regel
  • Betula ermanii var. incisa Koidz.
  • Betula ermanii var. japonica (Shirai) Koidz.
  • Betula ermanii var. macrostrobila Liou
  • Betula ermanii var. nipponica Maxim.
  • Betula ermanii var. parvifolia Koidz.
  • Betula ermanii var. saitoana (Nakai) Hatus.
  • Betula ermanii var. subbaicalensis Popov
  • Betula ermanii var. tomentosa Regel
  • Betula ermanii var. yingkiliensis S.L.Liou & Wang
  • Betula ganjuensis Koidz.
  • Betula incisa (Koidz.) Koidz.
  • Betula incisa Koidz. ex Komat.

and 13 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.