Wind Through Birch Tree

The whispering wind is soon making a thundering sound as it swims violently through the soft green spaces that surround a grove of bending birch trees. The sun fills the air with a shaking shadow so big that the grove seems to grow six times larger. Your eyes can't keep up with the enormous sense of beauty surrounding you, and tears begin to tickle your nose as they fall from your eyes to meet the ground. The common name birch is derived from an old Germanic root, birka, with the Proto-Indo-European root *bherəg, "white, bright; to shine." The Proto-Germanic rune berkanan is named after the birch. Birch species are generally small to medium-size trees or shrubs, mostly of temperate climates. The simple leaves are alternate, doubly serrate, feather-veined, petiolate, and stipulate. They often appear in pairs, but these pairs are really borne on spur-like two-leaved lateral branchlets. The bark of all birches is characteristically marked with long horizontal lenticels, and often separates into thin papery plates, especially upon the Paper Birch. It is practically imperishable, due to the resinous oil which it contains. Its decided color gives the common names gray, white, black, silver and yellow birch to different species. Birches often form even-aged stands on light, well-drained, particularly acidic soils. They are regarded as pioneer species, rapidly colonising open ground especially in secondary successional sequences following a disturbance or fire.