It is a close relative of common birch and is a shrub with many branches. The height of the shrub does not exceed one meter, and the width of its crown can reach one and a half meters. It has small and round leaves that are dark green above and light green below.
Sometimes dwarf birch is so small that only leaves can be seen on the plane of the lichen. The leaves are attached to the stems with short petioles. Earrings of this type of birch, in turn, are small and have a round-oval design. During ripening, they disintegrate into their constituent parts: scales and fruits.
The fruits are small, about 2 millimeters long, oval nuts with wings on the sides. Dwarf birch blooms in May, before the leaves open, with small, unisexual and unattractive flowers. Fruiting occurs starting in June.
Dwarf birch grows rather slowly. Its winter hardiness is very high, it is not for nothing that it grows in the northern regions of the earth's hemispheres: North America, North Russia, Yakutia and Western Siberia. Very often she is found in the highlands of the Alps. Her favorite spots are the rocky slopes and swampy areas of the Tundra.
The decorative type of dwarf birch is used for landscaping household plots, areas around buildings, for landscaping parks and decorating a landscape view in landscape design. Due to its compact rounded crown shape, this shrub does not require constant shearing.
Planting and leaving. Before planting, a hole is dug into which a mixture of garden soil, peat, humus and sand is introduced. In the future, the plant is fed with complex fertilizers, from spring to autumn. Nitrogen fertilizers such as mullein, nitrogen fertilizer and ammonium nitrate can be used for feeding. In the fall, you can use nitroammofosku or Kemira-universal fertilizer for feeding.
After planting in the first 3-4 days, it is necessary to water the plant abundantly, and on hot days it is advisable to increase the volume of liquid.
To control weeds, the soil should be loosened in the area of \ u200b \ u200bthe root system. In addition, the soil will be saturated with oxygen.
After the earrings have ripened, you can sow with seeds. This can be done immediately or wait until late autumn, after collecting the seeds.
Reproduction. Dwarf birch propagates by seedlings or seeds. Seedlings are planted in the ground in spring or autumn. They choose loose, well-fertilized soils, but as practice shows, they take root well on any type of soil. At the same time, dwarf birch loves moisture very much, so it needs to be regularly watered. When planting large plants with an open root system, their death is possible, since more mature plants do not like transplants and do not take root well.
Pests. Dwarf birch has its own significant set of pests. These include the bear, bubble-footed (thrips), beetle, goldfish, silkworm, leaf sawfly. When fighting them, the shrub should be treated with fungicides and insecticides.
Dwarf birch in the tundra
The tundra is one of the most suitable places for its growth. In this regard, it is the most common plant in the tundra. In this place, whole thickets of this type of birch are found, and especially in the southern part of the tundra. Moreover, it is distributed practically over the entire area of the tundra zone. Its neighbors in these rugged areas are lichens, moss and dwarf willows. Basically, dwarf birch serves as food for animals, but larger specimens are used by the local population as fuel.
Dwarf birch Yernik
In the tundra, this type of birch is called "yernik", which means "bush". In the harsh conditions of the North, it is very difficult to survive, and therefore this type of shrub has developed its own survival technology. It grows and moves further under the layers of snow, with thick branches spread wide. Thus, it is protected from severe frost and freezing. Therefore, it does not grow as a straight tree, but as a spreading shrub. Yernik is woven into the moss with many of its branches to such an extent that only the leaves and catkins of a dwarf birch can be seen on the surface. With its thickets, it occupies very large areas and moves in the same thickets into the depths of the tundra.
Under such conditions, reproduction by seeds occurs very rarely due to the fact that the seeds do not have time to ripen, and they rarely develop. Yernik has another, more effective method at the ready - vegetative. The shrub literally crawls along the ground, clinging to it with its branches. As a result of such contact, auxiliary roots are formed on the branches and young shoots of dwarf birch appear at the points of their formation for the next year. The seeds of a dwarf birch develop by the beginning of severe cold weather and remain in the catkins in winter.
Young shoots of dwarf birch appear only in areas where nothing is growing at this moment. Such areas appear after visiting these places by animals, for example, caribou - these are reindeer. They are very active in freeing the territory from everything edible, especially since there is not so much of it in the tundra. Then this space is irrigated with thawed spring waters. The combination of all these conditions allows the dwarf birch to occupy this territory. In the future, having populated this area, it will become one of the links in a huge, and so necessary, root chain.
Despite its small size, dwarf birch can live for about 100 years. After reaching this age, the process of rejuvenation of the shrub begins to occur. Old branches begin to dry out and finally die off. In their place, new young branches are formed, which begin a new life. But not all shrubs thus continue their movement along the tundra. Many of them dry up on the vine, and bearberry settles in its place. As soon as young shoots of dwarf birch appear in this place, bearberry gradually begins to recede. Based on this, we can say that dwarf birch is resistant not only to the harsh conditions of the tundra, but also has a great "vitality".
