Birch trees

[Kimmi]

I was looking through my boyfriend's backyard and saw that the birch trees are dropping their pine cones right now, I have seen people mention birch wood sticks as chews but haven't found anything about these cones.

Would they be safe? They look like a really fun thing to shred
How long would they need to be put in the oven for if so?

Pics

 

[melbur10]

Perhaps you have a diffrent birch spices than I've seen but typically birch 'cones' are just flimsy fall apart in your hands little flaky packages of seeds in my arboriculture course we would use the weeping birch 'cones' to throw at each other because our prof showed us that they 'explode' like confetti on impact LOL
So if thats what your talking about, I would not give them to a chin

 

[lilchinchilla]

I agree with Melbur. The birch I have seen doesn't really have cones and what they do have is catkins. It's more like what she suggested, where they explode on impact. I wouldn't give them to my chins either.
What I use is paper birch, and the bark and leaves are used by the wild animals here for food: http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/treebook/paperbirch.htm
Here's a picture of an example of the birch catkins: https://green.kingcounty.gov/gonative/PhotoFileDir/paperbirchcatkinsYKCXS.jpg

 

[melbur10]

Yes, thank you-catkins
I totaly couldn't remember thier name
When they mature they brown up and spread out all flaky similar to the appearance of a cone(at which point are quite delicate-so the wind can spread the seeds)

 

[Kimmi]

Ok thanks, the trees I'm looking at have both the catkins like you mentioned and also little pinecone like things, the are small but hard enough to cut your foot is you stand on them the wrong way.

But, if no one has had experience feeding these I think I'll pass