Identification Process: Before heading out for the day, we climbed up the set of stairs tracing the higher ridge of the thrust fault to gain a new perspective on our usual waterfront landscape. Approaching these stairs, a lone paper birch tree caught my eye. I saw the distinctive curls and peels of its white bark, and knew it had to be. Recognizing that one of its lookalikes may have thrown me for a loop, I looked more closely at the gray birch, river birch, and yellow birch online to ensure I was not mistaken. In my investigation, the darker color of the yellow birch’s bark, the lack of peels in the gray birch, and texture change in the river birch confirmed my suspicions that the tree standing tall before me was, in fact, a paper birch.
