Birch Tincture & Alcohol-Free Extract

Birch (Betula lenta), the sweet birch, black birch, or cherry birch, is a deciduous tree of the birch family, Betulaceae, native to eastern North America from southern Maine and Ontario down the Appalachians to Georgia and Alabama. Unlike the white birches, its bark is dark reddish-brown to nearly black, smooth and cherry-like on young trees and breaking into irregular plates with age. It grows 20 to 25 meters with oval, finely toothed leaves that turn bright gold in autumn and pendulous catkins in spring. Its twigs and bark taste and smell unmistakably of wintergreen, from methyl salicylate; birch beer was once brewed from them. We extract the dried bark.