When should a river birch be pruned?
Prune river birch in late summer or fall, or after the leaves have fully expanded in early summer — never late winter or early spring, because it bleeds sap profusely from cuts made when the sap is moving. The clump form is the real trap: the moment to remove a crossing or redundant stem is in the first ten years, since a mature clump stem leaves a wound the tree cannot close and birch decays quickly behind big cuts.
Reading river birch before you cut
The signature problem here is iron chlorosis — leaves turn chartreuse or yellow with darker green veins, worst on new growth at the top — because river birch wants acid soil and central Indiana's glacial clay typically runs neutral to alkaline. Stress is normal summer leaf drop in a dry August, which a mature river birch does routinely and recovers from; dying is thin, sparse crowns with dead twiggy tips at the top over consecutive seasons and chlorosis that deepens each year, since twig and branch dieback is chronic in this species and the dead parts shed readily.
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