Birch

A slender white stem, a little bent, under small light green domes all up its top half.

About 8 m tall out in the open. In the old forests it towers far higher: most stand two to four times that, the tallest up to nine times, and now and then an old giant stands among the rest.

Where it grows

Land	How many of the trees
Temperate forest	One in four
Taiga	One in five
Hills	About one in three
Steppe	Copses along the streams, three in five of the waterside trees

Trees of a kind keep together in stands about 60 m across.

Through the year

It leafs out in spring, its bare twigs budding green first. In autumn its leaves turn butter-yellow to gold, each tree in its own time, then fall pixel by pixel until the crown is bare twigs. It stands bare through the winter.

In play

Its trunk stops men and horses, who go round it. Wildfire leaves it black and bare, and burnt or felled ground grows back over about four years.