White beauty

This lovely birch should really be viewed in a leafless condition when the peeling white bark is seen to best effect.

I grew this tree from seed given to me by Ron McBeath, formerly of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. I was inspecting a white birch at the RBGE, Betula 'Inverleith', when I was approached by a bearded gentleman who commented on my interest.

We introduced ourselves and he suggested that if I accompanied him to his office he would give me seed of a white birch collected by himself in NW India, every bit, he said, as good as this one. I did - and he did! We've kept in touch ever since.

I grew a number of these trees, technically Betula utilis var. occidentalis, and planted an avenue of them at my last place of work, bringing only one with me to Arduaine. Unfortunately those I left behind me are all ruined, having been chopped back hard in the vain hope that it would protect them from Sudden Oak Death for some strange reason. They are now gawky and ugly, so mine is the only beautiful one left!