Betula pendulaRoth

silver birch

WFO wfo-0000335449 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Betula pendula, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. a Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205689559
Betula pendula, photographed by Yurii Basov
fig. b Yurii Basov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205103075
Betula pendula, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. c Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204145614
Betula pendula, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. d Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204780186
Betula pendula, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. e Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204190055
Betula pendula, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204129171
Betula pendula, photographed by Marina Potapova
fig. g Marina Potapova, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203208613
Betula pendula, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. h Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203934866

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 = 259 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 259 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 233 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 aetnensis Raf. ex J.Presl & C.Presl
  • Betula ajanensis Kom.
  • Betula alaskana Sarg.
  • Betula alba f. dalecarlica (L.f.) Regel
  • Betula alba f. laciniata (Hartm.) Dippel
  • Betula alba f. lobata Regel
  • Betula alba f. verrucosa (Ehrh.) Regel
  • Betula alba f. vulgaris Regel
  • Betula alba lus. expansa Regel
  • Betula alba lus. microphylla (Hartm.) Regel
  • Betula alba lus. pendula (Roth) Regel
  • Betula alba subsp. mandshurica Regel
  • Betula alba subsp. tauschii Regel
  • Betula alba subsp. verrucosa (Ehrh.) Regel
  • Betula alba unranked foliis-atropurpureis Van Geert
  • Betula alba unranked laciniata (Hartm.) de Vos
  • Betula alba unranked pendula-youngii T.Moore
  • Betula alba var. aetherea Wallr.
  • Betula alba var. arborescens Wallr.
  • Betula alba var. arbuscula Fr.
  • Betula alba var. atropurpurea Dippel
  • Betula alba var. bircalensis (Mela) Mela
  • Betula alba var. camtschatica Regel
  • Betula alba var. carelica Merckl.

and 209 more.

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.