Though they were being phased out, a few wood-fired stills continued to operate into the 1950s, a while after it was discovered that oil of wintergreen could be made synthetically from wood alcohol and salicylic acid – without using either black birch or wintergreen.
So many black birch saplings were once chipped and distilled to make oil of wintergreen that for a time, the tree became rather scarce. The inner bark, as any twig-chewing child can tell you, is delicious and fragrant: its wintergreen taste is from the very same oil found in Gaultheria procumbens, a small, creeping forest plant also called wintergreen. Illustration by Adelaide TyrolĪlso called sweet birch, cherry birch, or mahogany birch, this species is perhaps the only tree around that is best recognized by the flavor of its twigs.
