Others may have different experience but I've never seen a true sucker on birch. Suckers have roots. Sounds as if you have a shoot or sprout rather than a sucker. In which case the odds of being able to root it are very low. It's essentially a cutting and cuttings don't work well for birch. All you can do is wait and see. You might be lucky.

rooting a vast majority of trees.. is near impossible .... and those that can be.. need lots of special equipment ...

that said.. anything is possible.. once in a blue moon... so why not try ... what you did... is spot on. for the non-professional ....

ken

Customarily birches are raised from seed or grafted onto seedling root-stocks. If anyone is doing them from cuttings on a commercial level - where a system producing a consistent result will be wanted - it will be using some kind of special setup and methods. Search birch cuttings, birch propagation and the like to see what may be taking place.

That's amazing. Any chance of pictures of these roots? Keep us updated, Timothy.

"rooting a vast majority of trees.. is near impossible .... and those that can be.. need lots of special equipment ..."

That made me laugh about a childhood memory of an early, informal, horticulture lesson. My mother took 6-8' long branches from a friend's elm tree, and just planted them in the ground. I was < 10 YO at the time, but thought she was nuts. Three out of about 6 branches developed into shade trees.

Elm will grow from cuttings. And that has been one of its problems. Nearly all British elms were clones and when DED struck they went down en masse, having no genetic diversity.

But it's true, a lot of trees don't grow easily from cuttings.

I still need to know how to propagate chinese tallow. I guess I will just try this (I have done the same with crepe myrtles and roses) and see if it works.

Of course elm will grow from cuttings, floral. But most think of cuttings as something about 6-8 inches long, not eight feet of hardwood.