Birch trees anew

Alder trees on Malcolm Island

I went out hiking this morning. One of my companions was Yolanna, who grew up literally in the backwoods of British Columbia. She can tell the difference between a thrush and a robin by their song. With Goethe's comments about birch trees on my mind, I imagined we were walking past a forest of such trees and took a picture, only for Yo to tell me that they were not birch trees, but alders. I post my own photo here, along with a lovely shot of the real thing by the photographer Randy Nyhof. (Click both to enlarge.)

Randy Nyhof, Birch Trees

Over the years I must have seen many such shots like Randy's, which made me imagine that the straight, spare trunks before me this morning were birch. According to Yo, birch doesn't grow in a wet climate, which is what we have out here in the Pacific Northwest. Birch grows where it is dry.

There is a great charm about birch trees, and it will bear looking into in connection with Goethe. Allow me to post another portrait of birches, by the Russian painter Ivan Shishkin (1883), entitled In the Birch Tree Forest. The forest itself reminds me of the one I hiked through this morning. My inability to distinguish alder from birch is due to the fact that I am a totally urban person, without much expertise in the works of nature, unlike Goethe.

Picture credit: Visual Elsewhere; Randy Nyhof