Birch bark or birchbark is the bark of several Eurasian and North American birch trees of the genus Betula.
The strong and water-resistant cardboard-like bark can be easily cut, bent, and sewn, which made it a valuable building, crafting, and writing material, since pre-historic times. Even today birch bark remains a popular type of wood for various handicrafts and arts.
Birch bark also contains substances of medicinal and chemical interest. Some of those products (such as betulin) also have fungicidal properties that help preserve bark artifacts, as well as food preserved in bark containers.
Read more about Birch Bark: Collection and Storage, Working, Uses
Famous quotes containing the words birch and/or bark:
“The birch begins to crack its outer sheath
Of baby green and show the white beneath....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)