Question
hello, my weeping birch has no leaves and it's spring and when I took some of the branches off right from the trunk it was white like wood is it alive ? does it go dormant? I live in LI.NY. zone 7 or 8 ?  thank-you for the help

Answer
You can tell if the tree is alive by scraping a small bit of bark off the end of a branch and if the color under the bark is green then the branch is still alive. If the color in brown then this branch is dead. Check other branches and by doing this you can determine if the whole tree is dead. Also check near the ground level and see if the trunk is green under the bark. If so prune the tree back to the green area and water. Yes they do go dormant--lose their leaves in the winter.