Silver birch help!

[StormCloud52]

I moved house four years ago and in an old water feature which was left here a weed started growing. I used an app to identify it and it has always said it’s a silver birch.

I feel quite fond of it now and even throw it some hose water now and again. Other than that, I’ve done nothing at all. However, this year it is bending slightly and also its bark has developed these white spots. It started as a weed but I feel bonded to it now so I suppose I’m going to have to look after it. Should I do something to help it stand upright and are these white spots bad or part of the peeling into silver process?

Silver birches have a natural weeping habit, and it is in a bit of a corner, so that's what's causing it.

Difficult to see from the photo, but are the white spots hard and rough to the touch?

What’s it actually growing in? It looks like a container full of rocks?

Hard to tell from the photo, but the white spots could just be the typical white bark developing as the tree matures. Silver birch start off with brown bark before becoming 'silver'. You don't need to prop it up unless it's obstructing something - it will find its own way.

if you want to support it to grow, take out the rocks in the pot, give it some compost and some slow-release plant food and water it - 10 mins water once a week is better than a dribble each day.

Lovely. The spots are just natural maturing of the bark. Birches are beautiful trees. But they can typically grow 20m or more tall. To really take care of it you would need to give it more soil! Or ideally plant it in the garden or the wild and let it become a majestic tree.

Yes, and if I scrape them with my nail they come off.

It’s a water feature that the people who owned the house before me had. I moved it into the corner when I first moved in vaguely thinking id get rid of it at some point.

My back garden is decked and my front is a lawn so nowhere to plant it. It seems happy enough but the white spots do scrape off.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to plant it near the house or any walls anyway.

i don’t know how happy it will be in a container long term - it might be that you could treat it like a large bonsai, but I’m no expert on that.

Is there any soil in the water feature bottom? Because if not it will need some for nutrients etc in future. It could happily live in a large pot though, if looked after. The trick to repotting/moving large trees/shrubs etc is not letting them know you’ve repotted them. IE take a wide margin of their current location with them to a new, much larger pot/hole. Not sure you’re going to be able to do that if it’s in a water feature though, depends what it’s made of. But probably worth trying. Plants and trees spring up in all sorts of inconvenient places in my garden, self seeding or otherwise from my other plants. I can usually successfully move them to a better location if careful. Good luck!

It does seem happy where it is!

If it gets too big, it can be coppiced - cut back fairly low to the ground and it should throw up multiple stems.

Silver birch are grown as bonsai trees, yes.

They can be pruned to keep in shape, but have to be done in the growing season when in leaf, otherwise they tend to die back. They have a habit of losing lower branches anyway.

@StormCloud52 - I've done some research for you and the white lumpy nodules on the bark are normal so you can leave well alone.

I would check it is not rooting through the bottom of the pot into the ground. You don't want it growing under your foundations.

@BeNiceWhenItsFinished Do you know if silver birches can be pruned to stop them growing too tall? I've seen them when they've just been lopped off at the top and they look terrible. I'd like to keep mine a nice shape but not too tall.

Thank you very much! I will leave it in peace. It seems to thriving without my interference whereas those I lovingly buy plant food for and water diligently die.

Will double check, thank you.

We had oura topped but also the other branches taken back. It looked a bit iffy for a year or so but it’s a nice shape now.

You have to prune in the right way, and reduce the crown sympathetically. I too have seen some silver birches totally butchered by so-called 'tree surgeons', aka cowboys with a chainsaw licence. My neighbour has one, and it is grim.

What you need to do is study the shape of it, and remove some branches entirely, while leaving smaller, more pleasingly-shaped ones intact. So that at the end of it, you still have something that looks like a silver birch, only smaller. To do this properly on a large-ish tree is a highly skilled job.

The OP's one is a lot smaller than that though, so it wouldn't be as much of a concern.

They have dense, shallow roots and aren't anywhere near as much of an issue as some other trees. I agree though that the OP needs to check and make sure this isn't happening.

I've posted 2 pictures, one of a silver birch in our garden,yours definitely isn't a silver birch, and an ornamental cherry tree, which has bark and leaves like yours.

even apart from the potential roots issue it needs moving - it’s already quite lopsided because it can’t grow branches into the walls!

My pictures are apparently "sensitive" and under review.. honestly, I did get permission from the trees!

The leaves on your cherry don’t look like the OPs to me. Hers look like birch leaves not cherry.
your silver birch is mature - they’re not silver when they’re saplings.

That's the first thing I thought of as well. 😊

You have been in the house for 4 years, I would expect silvering by then.