Silver Birch

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Birch Drooping, White Birch, Silver Birch, Betula Pendula

Silver birch is widespread in the forest zone of the European part. Grows on dry, wet, sandy, clayey, chernozem and stony-gravelly soils.

This is a large tree of the birch family up to 20 m high. Small birches have brown bark. The trunk of an adult birch is smooth, and white, with black lenticels on the bark.

The branches are thin drooping, with resinous warts. Leaves are long-petiolate, alternate, rhombic-ovate, thin-skinned, smooth, dark green, young-sticky, and dotted with resinous glands.

Kidneys are ovoid-conical, 3-5 mm long and 2-5 mm thick, slightly pointed, straight, shiny, waxy, usually sticky, raid. Male earrings 5-6 cm long hanging. Fruit – oblong-elliptical nutlet with two membranous wings.

An earring contains about 500 nuts. Blooms in May – June. The fruits ripen in August – September. Lives 100-120 years. In medicine, they use buds, leaves, bark, wood, birch sap and phytopathogenic parasitic fungus charge, forming outgrowths on birch trunks.

Birch buds are harvested during felling in winter or in early spring, at the beginning of swelling. Branches that have kidneys, are cut off, tied into bundles (brooms) and dried in this form outdoors or in a dryer at a temperature of 25-30 °C.

After drying the kidneys are threshed. When dry, they should be dark brown in color, with a pleasant smell, bitter taste and shiny surface. Young leaves are cut off in spring (in May – June) in dry weather, when they have not yet coarsened.

Dried in the usual way in the shade. Buds and leaves are stored in cloth or paper bags 2 years. Birch sap is extracted in early spring, before blooming leaves, by cutting a tree.

Birch buds contain essential oil, ascorbic acid, tannins, saponins, bitterness, resin, grape sugar and yellow dye. The leaves contain essential oil, ascorbic and nicotinic acids, glycosides, saponins, triterpene alcohols and bitterness inositol.

Kidney drugs have a strong diuretic, diaphoretic and choleretic effect. They are used for gastritis, gastric ulcer, rheumatism, and gout, and as a blood purifier remedy for various skin diseases.The leaves are anti-inflammatory, disinfectant, and choleretic properties.

The diuretic effect of drugs in the leaves is inferior compared to the action it has on the kidneys, but the leaves do not contain resinous substances and do not irritate the renal tissue. leaf preparations are used orally for uric acid diathesis, and inflammation of the gallbladder bladder, and externally used for pustular skin diseases, eczema, swelling, and pain in the joints affected by the rheumatic process.

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