Paper Birch Catkins 2023-04-14 (Fairbanks, AK, USA) Posted 2023-04-17

A few days ago my family was out in the yard enjoying the sunshine, and I noticed the male catkins on the paper birch tree. I'm sure the male catkins were there already, but I just noticed them. So I took a few more photos.

Wide shot of the branches

Zoomed in on male and female catkins

Close-up of male catkins

Close-up of male catkins

We shook one of the branches, and a bunch of seeds fell out onto the snow. Here is another picture of the trunk, so you can see the bark colors:

Paper birch trunk

The sun is high in the sky now (about 36 degrees elevation), so a lot of snow is melting on the days we have clear skies, but we have had a lot of overcast days the last week or so, and even some snow. NWS forecast shows two sunny days and several party cloudy days later this week, so I could imagine most of the snow melted by the end of the week, except of course the large piles of it from the plowing, as well as the snow deep in the ditches.