Betula nigraL.

river birch

WFO wfo-0000334917 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Betula nigra, photographed by Anne Parker
fig. a Anne Parker, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-16 / obs. 198247374
Betula nigra, photographed by Shawn Taylor
fig. b Shawn Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186103317
Betula nigra, photographed by Shawn Taylor
fig. c Shawn Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186107876
Betula nigra, photographed by Brian Finzel
fig. d Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 188630765
Betula nigra, photographed by Tanya Riseman
fig. e Tanya Riseman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192515194
Betula nigra, photographed by Brett Ortler
fig. f Brett Ortler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184282324
Betula nigra, photographed by Chrissy McClarren and Andy Reago
fig. g Chrissy McClarren and Andy Reago, CC0 1.0 / obs. 182136576
Betula nigra, photographed by Lauren McLaurin
fig. h Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167443752

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.

Flowering n = 98 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 98 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 6 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 americana Buc'hoz
  • Betula lanulosa Michx.
  • Betula nigra unranked pendula Paul
  • Betula nigra var. parvifolia Regel
  • Betula rubra F.Michx.
  • Betula rupestris Raf.

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.

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