What if Birches could speak? What would they say exactly? I pondered this as I went out photographing this weekend. Would they speak of the fact that they are the first trees that rooted in Sweden after the last ice age gave away around 13000 years ago. Or would they speak of the relationship to the humans that later settled here ?
Birches have a love and hate relationship to the Swedish people, believe it or not. Looking back it was loved for its many uses and beauty. It was used to produce potash which is actually potassium. The name derives from the two words pot and ash, which refers to birch ashes or other wood ash that was soaked in water in a pot. This was the primary means of manufacturing the product before the Industrial Era. The word "potassium" is actually derived from "potash". Potassium was essential for such things as making soap and glass and even fine crystal.
The Birch was used for much more than that. It was used to make a lot of different house hold items and tools as it was easy to craft and work with and also because it is a very flexible wood. It was used as food for the animals, and even humans during times of famine. Most importantly it was a good wood to use in the fire place and for cooking.
So what is there to dislike about birch, why was it slowly replaced by pine ? The answer is because when industrialization took place the cellulose was not possible to be processed in the same way as pine. At one point the birch was almost extinct in big parts of Sweden as farmers had replaced it with pine. This lead to a big problem because pine and birch actually need to live in symbiosis for the forest to be healthy. Today a lot of the pine forests are infested with the bark beetle and because it grows so dense there is no barrier to stop it from spreading and ruining huge parts of the forest.
Good news is that the birch has made a comeback. As industry lead to new methods of using the cellulose of the birch it has once again become popular. In the same time people have understood the need for diversity to have a healthy forest. So that’s why we still have the pleasure to see the birch growing in our Swedish forest, to tell their stories of their past.
