Birch bark canoes in tree form

Species name: Betula papyrifera

Common name: paper birch, white birch

Location: Ontario

This tree species is incredibly common in Canada, from the northern edge of the Carolinian forest north to the tree line. Despite being a deciduous tree, it is most common in coniferous forests like the Boreal forest. It is not shade tolerant, so is one of the first species to colonize an area that has been burned or deforested. It is also a popular ornamental tree for the attractive bark: white, peeling bark on the trunk, and reddish-brown bark on the twigs.

There are a few notable uses of the white birch. The first is in the lumber and construction industry. While the lumber generated from a white birch is not ideal for building anything other than ornamental pieces (chairs, tables, etc.), chipping the trunks and pressing them into boards gives OSB or oriented strand board, which is incredibly important in the housing industry. It is used most commonly as sub-flooring in homes (and as wall panels on which to attach other decorative surfaces), but also sometimes as sub-roofing (but is not very water resistant and so requires a membrane before the roof can be shingled). By far, the most substantial use of white birch today is in the manufacture of (drumroll) popsicle sticks.

There are unusual pockets of boreal forest that exist in the middle of the United States that are likely remnants from the last major ice age. Because it is now (more than likely) too warm for the white birch to happily exist in those locations, it is listed as threatened or vulnerable (or some variation thereof) in seven states: Tennessee, Colorado, Wyoming, West Virginia, Virginia, Illinois and Indiana. It is the provincial tree of Saskatchewan and the state tree of New Hampshire.

Historically, it was very important to Native North Americans as a canoe tree. There were two different kinds of canoes built from this tree, depending on the intended use. The first is to cut down a large tree and hollow out the inside to make a thin shell. These types of canoes weren't very common since finding trees large enough to do this is rare. Using bark pieces to form a waterproof barrier and shaping around a frame made of thin branches was much more common, and is still done in some areas today (although more of an ornamental canoe as opposed to one used for fishing and transport).

Spindly Black Spruce

Species name: Picea mariana (formerly Picea nigra)

Common name: Black spruce

Location: Nova Scotia

I took this photo in Kejimkujik National Park on the bog boardwalk leading out to the beach. It was a pretty typical maritime spring day: cool in the morning, warming up quickly and becoming incredibly foggy then the fog burning off by the mid-afternoon. This was one of those rare moments where you could see more than 10 feet in front of your face as a fog cloud was blown out of the way.

Black spruce is a typical plant of the boreal forest in Canada and Alaska. It's a native evergreen tree with a very typical shape: somewhat bushy at the bottom, becoming much narrower and more spindly towards the top. One of the most impressive characteristics of this plant towards the northern part of its range is that its a great indicator of predominant wind direction. Black spruce grows very slowly, and slower still when the wind is pushing against the tips of branches. The "wind side" of the tree has much shorter branches compared to the "sheltered side".

Black spruce is one of the many boreal species that require fire in order for their seeds to germinate in great numbers, and so for that reason this species is especially successful at recolonizing the boreal forest after a fire. Since forest fires are relatively common in this forest zone, stands of boreal forest that are dominated by black spruce are often trees of the same age (as opposed to typical successional forests where there are old and young trees of the same species in the same location). Within the boreal zone, it's an incredibly common tree and is at no risk of becoming a threatened or endangered speices.

Black spruce trees grow slowly and never attain a very large circumference despite the tree's age. For this reason they are not valuable lumber trees in the construction business. They are, however, a major source of pulp for the paper industry in Canada. As cultural importance, the black spruce is the provincial tree of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.