Looks like it to me, but it didn't pass the "sniff" test. Maybe, it's too dry to smell like spearmint. The upper section had these bud-like things on the tips of the branches. Sorry for them being blurry
I don't think so, maybe ................... oops, I thought you said black beech, not birch. Definitely could be birch.
During the summer, I'll head to the ocean and sit for a while on the birch.. i mean beech... beach, I mean.
I think it might be a black birch. I have quite a few on my property and the bark changes dramatically as they get older. A Google search will show you how the bark changes from the young to older trees. The seeds look like birch as well as the horizonal wrap of the bark for a young tree. Here's a pic of a more mature black birch.... You can still see some of the characteristics of the young trees bark in this pic.
the blurry buds are flowers black birch supposedly is also called cherry birch as the bark looks a lot like cherry with the bark and the flowers I'd say that what you have is black birch. Should smell like wintergreen though if you scratch a live green twig. Or maybe even the bark.
Those "buds" are actually flowers called catkins. You won't get a spearmint smell if the black birch has been dead for a while as this one appears to be since it rotted at the stump and either fell over or was pushed over. Like other birches, it rots fast and gets punky so get it cut up, split, stacked and top covered.
Definitely black birch. As others have said, it loses its' scent after a while. Volatile oils or something like that, evaporating. I have a bunch of it in my woodshed, dry a couple years, there's no scent left at all.
Looks like birch, but not black birch. Black birch has a chalky grey color. That's a yellow birch without a doubt. Which is just as fine on the BTU scale.
