The birch is known for a wide variety of special features: Above all, it enjoys widespread popularity because of its distinctive white trunk and picturesque appearance. But there is another striking detail of the birch: its flowers, the so-called catkins. Find out how to easily recognize birch blossoms.

The birch blossom brings allergy sufferers no joy

When is the birch in bloom

Birch trees bloom between March and May. Birch trees form their first, always unisexual flowers at the age of five. Free-standing trees are really sexually mature when they are about ten years old. The male flowers appear as early as the autumn of the previous year. They overwinter until they open the following spring. As monoecious trees, both male and female catkins are present on the same tree.

Attention, flowering time is the same as pollen time

As a pioneer plant, the birch releases large amounts of pollen via its male catkins for extremely effective wind pollination. Every year in the spring months allergy sufferers have to struggle with the very strong allergen of birch pollen. You should therefore consider and rule out a possible allergy tendency in yourself or those around you before you plant a birch.

Recognize the blossom of the birch

With a length of up to ten centimetres, male birch blossoms are significantly larger and more conspicuous than the female catkins. Since they are already past hibernation, male flowers hang from the ends of the older shoots. They are strong yellow-orange in color and are elongated and cylindrical in appearance. The female flowers of the birch, on the other hand, look rather inconspicuous. Only two to four centimeters in size, they appear pale yellow-green at first. However, towards the end of summer they take on an intense light brown nuance. When looking for female flowers, always look at the ends of young annual and leafed spurs.

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Trees