Peace and Plants: A Slavic Love

The birch is not having an easy time at the moment, it is almost a controversial plant.

It actually brings joy on May Day: in the old days, lovers would put a birch tree under the window of their loved ones at night, and as a traditional maypole, people danced around it and hung it with colorful ribbons.

Johanna Kuroczik

Editor in the "Science" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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In spring, however, 14 percent of Germans would prefer to uproot every birch tree within a radius of 300 kilometers, that's how far their aggressive pollen travels.

Like me, they are allergic to the male birch tree's desire to reproduce, which sometimes makes us want to scrape our facial skin with a potato peeler, everything itches so much.

Thanks to the sleep-inducing drugs, the energy is missing.

Climate change is to blame for the misery: the season starts earlier and the trees produce more pollen.

In some cities, no new birch trees are therefore planted, such as Nuremberg or Meschede.

That's still a long way off, this weekend it will shine alarmingly red on the digital birch pollen map of the pollen information service, from Germany to Russia.

Moreover, the birch still bears the burden of its cultural significance - as a national symbol of Russia.

She is sung about in folk songs, and homage is paid to her in poems.

“In love with a tree” is the headline of

online in May 2020, a medium that could be located somewhere between a propaganda newspaper and a Russian image campaign.

There the question is asked: "Why are the Russians crazy about birch trees?" There could be many reasons for this.

Birches are very common in Central Russia and Eastern Europe.

likes the cold, you don't get temperatures above 25 degrees.

Its hard wood is used for building houses, drinking cups and firewood, because birch wood burns even when wet thanks to the tar.

The Laplanders are said to have woven carpets from the roots of the dwarf birch, and its bark was not only used in Russia to make the traditional lapti shoes, but also, during the First World War, to make postcards.

The birch was said to have mystical powers, so young shamans in Siberia carved a drum out of this tree of life as part of their initiation.

And leaves and juice were said to have healing powers, for example in hair loss.

The sweet liquid from the tribe is still popular to this day in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.

And the Wenik ritual, in which blows with birch branches stimulate blood circulation,

Why Russians are so crazy about birches is being researched in a project funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation on the Soviet invention of the "Russian birch".

only became a part of this

during the Soviet era under Stalin and Khrushchev.

The front poets of the Second World War stylized the birch as a symbol of a threatened homeland, and in the 1950s to 1970s village writers coined the nostalgically transfigured image of the birch as a sign of the disappearing "real", rural Russia.

Around this time, "birch" became an important namesake, for example for a women's folk dance ensemble or foreign exchange shops.

So the birch as a symbol of homeland was a Soviet project.

It's a pity that Russians claim the birch like a jealous lover, because after all it's popular throughout northern Europe, heralding spring and symbolizing new beginnings.

Birch trees are more than 150 years old, quite a few are likely to have survived Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Currently, it could even be a peaceful symbol for all Slavs - or a common object of hatred.

Depending on whether they like to drink birch sap or are allergic.