Paper birch grows across the boreal and northern hardwood forests from Newfoundland and Labrador to Alaska, south to New Jersey and the Virginia mountains. It is a pioneer tree that seeds into burns, clearings and moist hillsides and stream banks, and it prefers cool, moist soils. Its leaves feed the caterpillars of the eastern tiger swallowtail and the luna moth, and birds and mammals use its seeds, buds and cavities.
The Latin name Betula is the classical word for birch, and papyrifera means paper-bearing, after the bark. Humphry Marshall published the species name, and older works treated it as a variety of the European Betula alba. Indigenous peoples across its range built birchbark canoes and made baskets, containers, house coverings and scrolls from the bark, and rolled bark was used as a taper or a smudge stick against mosquitoes.