Is birch bark same as poplar bark?

Wherever you go, folk culture has its own names for plants. Sometimes the same name is used for different plants in different areas. A local botanist, such as a naturalist or university professor would be the correct person to ask this question to.

In my book of trees by Vines, poplars are in the willow family, Salicaceae, while birches are Betulaceae.

Some species of each family do resemble eachother, but I suspect the answer to your question is no.

I just looked through Wulff's The Traditional Crafts of Persia and could find no mention of birch in the timers used in Iran.

It does mention that Zan, a type of beech (Fagus spp.) was used for arrows and spears. In general there is little on archery since when Wulff was researching there were neither bowyers or fletchers in Iran. There are many different types of beech and poplar mentioned with their specific uses.

If you give me the page from the book, I will check with the author where the information came from.

I have looked at both birch and poplar in Xinjiang. They are definitely different. The poplar has its distinctive column form and is (and probably was) used to provide a wind-break and to mark out roads in a way that is visible over a great distance. Its bark is rough and would not have been used for covering bows.

I find ancient names for plant and animal species very vague. But I know that it is very easy for experts to identify species from ancient wood and bark with no more than a tiny sliver. It would be better, then, to rely on surviving specimens than literary sources.

Thank you everyone for their answers.
Bede it's on page 295 and at the end of the page it shows the refrence and i think it's from Dehkhoda book.

Is there any online store for birch bark?

It is actually on page 294 where it was written that the Sasanian Shah, Bahram Gur, made a number of changes to the construction of bows including using bone and covering the bow with tuz which is described as the bark of the khadang or poplar tree.

Khadang is not mentioned in Wulff as being a term in use in contemporary Iran by carpenters. I had trouble finding it in my old Persian/English dictionary at the time the book was being written. I found a mountain called Qalat-i Khadang. I assume it is the same word.

Bahram Gur is often used as the originator of archery equipment and techniques because of his high profile as an archer in the Shahnama. He was also popular with Arab historians because of his links with pre-Islamic Arab princes.

Thank you for your information Khadang is one of the most difficult translation even for us it was the tree which they make saddle,bow and arrow from it buy we dont know which tree!

Interesting.
The trees for Asian saddles were made from beech and birch. Arrows were also made from both woods. Either could be used for some parts of the cores of composite bows.

I will check to see if anyone has come up with a good translation.

It's really interesting for me and i get shocked when read this.
we've both birch and poplar here in Iran and they are really look same with little diffrences.
maybe the Khadang was birch not poplar and just for their likeness they call it poplar?

The split up of tree names in Wulff suggests that carpenters in Iran were very sensitive to the differences in wood types. However, that doesn't mean that tree types matched the modern botanical system based on Linnaeus. What often happens is that trees growing in different climatic regions produce wood with different characteristics and therefore people working with wood give it different names.

I spoke to Edward McEwen about tuz and he said in Persian archery literature it was generally understood to be birch bark. He said he would see if he had any references to khadang and get back to me. Since he reads both Ottoman Turkish and Persian and the vocabularies are mixed, he might be able to find the word.

It might turn up in poems or other literature as well.

I hope this is helping you.

Thanks for your help.
I'll wait for your anwer!

This is embarrassing, but I found out the answer when we were working on the texts used in Persian Swordsmanship and Archery. At least in the 11th century, tuz meant birch bark. The changing meanings of words can be perplexing for someone trying to make a modern reconstruction from traditional textual sources. When it changed to mean poplar bark is yet to be determined.

Iran in the past had much more extensive forests than exist now. The variety of trees in the Caspian provinces meant that many types of timber could be traded within the country as well as outside.