It has been hand-planted by Tsarinas and felled by foresters. It has been celebrated by peasants, worshipped by pagans and painted by artists. It has self-seeded across mountains and rivers and train tracks and steppe and right through the ruined modernity of a nuclear fall-out site. And like all symbols, the story of the birch has its share of horrors (white, straight, native, pure: how could it not?). But, maybe in the end, what I'm really in search of is a birch that means nothing: stripped of symbolism, bereft of use-value . . . A birch that is simply a tree in a land that couldn't give a shit.

Tom Jeffreys is a writer and critic with a particular interest in art that engages with environmental questions. His writing has appeared in publications including ArtReview, Frieze, the Independent, Monocle, New Scientist and The World of Interiors. He is the author of Signal Failure: London to Birmingham, HS2 on foot (Influx Press, 2017) and editor of online magazine The Learned Pig. He lives in Edinburgh and is obsessed with cricket.