Betula papyriferaMarshall

paper birch

WFO wfo-0000335192 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Betula papyrifera, photographed by Michelle Norcéide
fig. a Michelle Norcéide, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205911390
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Carter Dorscht
fig. b Carter Dorscht, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205513541
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. c Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204521279
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. d Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202122693
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. e Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202122536
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. f Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202122348
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. g Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202122452
Betula papyrifera, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. h Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202122260

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 91 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 91 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 45 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 alba lus. latifolia
  • Betula alba subsp. excelsa (Aiton) Regel
  • Betula alba subsp. latifolia (Tausch) Regel
  • Betula alba subsp. papyrifera (Marshall) Regel
  • Betula alba var. communis Regel
  • Betula alba var. commutata Regel
  • Betula alba var. elobata Fernald
  • Betula alba var. papyrifera (Marshall) Spach
  • Betula davurica var. americana Regel
  • Betula excelsa L. ex B.D.Jacks.
  • Betula excelsa Aiton
  • Betula grandis Schrad.
  • Betula kamtschatica var. kenaica (W.H.Evans) C.-A.Jansson
  • Betula kenaica W.H.Evans
  • Betula latifolia Tausch
  • Betula lenta var. papyrifera (Marshall) Castigl.
  • Betula lyalliana (Koehne ex Schelle) Bean
  • Betula montanensis Rydb. ex B.T.Butler
  • Betula neoalaskana var. kenaica (W.H.Evans) B.Boivin
  • Betula papyracea Aiton
  • Betula papyracea var. communis Schelle
  • Betula papyracea var. grandis (Schrad.) Schelle
  • Betula papyracea var. lyalliana Schelle
  • Betula papyrifera f. coriacea Fernald & Wiegand

and 21 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.

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.