Betula alleghaniensisBritton

yellow birch

WFO wfo-0000330900 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Pierre Cartier
fig. a Pierre Cartier, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 205008115
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Pierre Cartier
fig. b Pierre Cartier, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205011587
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. c Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202799233
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. d Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201058116
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. e Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202568886
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203963687
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. g Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200604406
Betula alleghaniensis, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. h Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200609024

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 45 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 45 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Betula alleghaniensis f. macrolepis (Fernald) Brayshaw
  • Betula alleghaniensis var. fallax (Fassett) Brayshaw
  • Betula alleghaniensis var. macrolepis (Fernald) Brayshaw
  • Betula excelsa Pursh
  • Betula lenta var. lutea Regel
  • Betula lutea F.Michx.
  • Betula lutea f. fallax Fassett
  • Betula lutea f. macrolepis (Fernald) Fernald
  • Betula lutea var. alleghaniensis (Britton) Rehder
  • Betula lutea var. genuina Regel
  • Betula lutea var. macrolepis Fernald
  • Betula lutea var. persicifolia Dippel
  • Betula persicifolia K.Koch

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.