Betula populifolia Marshall

Trees , broadly pyramidal, to 10 m; trunks usually several. Bark when young dark reddish brown, in maturity becoming grayish white, smooth, close; lenticels dark, horizontally expanded. Twigs without taste and odor of wintergreen, glabrous to sparsely pubescent, dotted with small, inconspicuous, resinous glands. Leaf blade broadly ovate to deltate or rhombic with 5--18 pairs of lateral veins, 3--10 × 3--8 cm, base truncate to cuneate, marginally coarsely, irregularly, or sometimes obscurely doubly serrate, apex abruptly long-acuminate; surfaces abaxially glabrous or sparsely pubescent, often covered with minute, resinous glands. Infructescences erect to nearly pendulous, nearly cylindric, 1--2.5(--3) × 0.8--1 cm, shattering with fruits in early fall; scales adaxially densely pubescent, lobes diverging distal to middle, central lobe cuneate, acute, much shorter than lateral lobes, lateral lobes divergent, broad, irregularly angular. Samaras with wings much broader than body, broadest near middle, often extended beyond body both apically and basally. 2 n = 28.

Rocky or sandy open woods, moist to dryish slopes, old fields, and waste places; at elevations from 100-600 metres. Margins of swamps and ponds, also in dry sandy or gravelly barren soils, growing well in poor almost sterile soils.

The sap is used as a sweet drink. It can be fermented to beer or vinegar. The inner bark is ground into flour and used as an emergency breadstuff.

It can be grown from seeds.