Old Growth Birch Forest

The same birch, grown twice as tall. Old growth birch forest is the variant where the trunks tower over an ordinary birch canopy, and that height is the entire difference at ground level.

It is one of only six biomes where trail ruins generate, which is the one thing worth digging for here. Otherwise the list is short: birch logs, birch leaves, wildflowers, and the usual cows, pigs, sheep and chickens between the trunks.

Temperature 0.6, humidity 0.6, mild and temperate, rainfall rather than snow, and uncommon enough that you notice when you walk into one. 1.7.2 added it under the name Tall Birch Forest, and in 26.2 minecraft:old_growth_birch_forest generates under the newer one.

It sits inside ordinary Overworld birch woodland. Birch Forest and Forest are the only biomes it borders.

Look for unusually tall birch that tower over a normal birch canopy.

Uncommon, and the difference is height rather than colour, because the trunks run far above a normal birch. Walk a birch forest to its far side and compare canopies as you go. Being a patch inside its own parent biome, it hides in plain sight: travel through birch long enough and the canopy soon turns tall, which is what will reveal it. Watch how far the crowns stand over the rest, because nowhere in the neighbours above does birch grow like that.

The tall birch carries the same four animals as the ordinary kind, in the same proportions: sheep on 30 percent of every spawn attempt, chickens and pigs on 25 percent, cows on 20 percent, every one of them four at once.

Between them they cover the basics. Wool comes off a sheep and regrows after shearing once it has eaten grass. Beef and leather come off a cow, which also fills a bucket with milk. Porkchops come off a pig, which will take a saddle and follow a stick with a carrot on the end. Eggs, feathers and raw chicken come from the chickens. Nothing on the list is hostile, though the shade under these trees is dark enough for what wanders in. They keep to themselves. Counted per attempt the chicken is a quarter, four at a time, with the cow a fifth behind it; a cow, for example, gives up leather and beef and is worth a bucket of milk, and sheep give mutton as well as wool. A cow drops leather all the same, and fills a bucket when milked.

Cow

Pig

Sheep

Chicken

Birch Log and Birch Leaves, and nothing else on the list, but the trunks are the tall kind rather than the ordinary birch next door, so one tree here is worth two over the border.

Wildflowers grow in only a handful of biomes and this is one of them. That aside, the trip is wood from its trees, and the tall birches make it the fastest birch in the game to strip.

Few biomes do birch at this scale: people leave with a full inventory off two or three trunks, and the whole wood stays standing behind them.

Birch Log

Birch Leaves

The tall birch got a camp in 26.3. The Abandoned Camp here keeps to birch fences and stands in a carpet of wildflowers, with peonies, lilac and rose bushes around it, a few mushrooms by the mossy stones and, in some layouts, water close by. Its white tent holds straw beds, and a map in the chest leads on to the next camp.

Tall birch and nothing else built between them. This biome has nothing built tied to it before 26.3, so the tall trees and the rolling hills they stand on are the reason to come, not loot.

One thing does mark it out. Trail Ruins, the buried remains you excavate rather than mine, reach six biomes and no more, and old growth birch forest is one of them. Beyond that, the underground follows its own plan rather than the biome above: mineshafts below the roots, a dungeon room or two off them, and, now and again, a stronghold, much as it does nearly everywhere. What is dug up beneath the tall trunks, dungeons and mineshafts and an occasional stronghold, was generated with no regard for biome boundaries, so exploring rewards you with scenery and a camp on top and buildings only below. The generation responsible ignores them, which is why such tunnels are still there under the roots.

Ten tall birch per chunk, eleven on one chunk in ten, from a pass that only this biome runs. Wildflowers come on one chunk in two in three patches of 64 tries, and the ordinary forest flowers on one chunk in seven. Forty nine passes, one more than a normal forest, and the difference is entirely in how tall the trees are told to grow.

The tall birches make no difference to the livestock: this biome sits outside both animal variant lists, so a chicken here is a chicken anywhere.

Like its smaller version, the old growth birch forest is one of the biomes a stronghold can be pulled towards.

The tall birches are one of only six biomes on this site where trail ruins are buried, and they start fifteen blocks below zero with the terrain laid back over the top of them.

Below that the usual pair runs on: mineshafts, and the trial chambers in their -40 to -20 band with the ordinary spawns switched off inside.

Everything that spawns in Old Growth Birch Forest is worth something. Between them the mobs here drop 6 different things: mutton, porkchops, chicken, feathers, beef and leather.

30 percent of the animal draw in Old Growth Birch Forest goes to Sheep, so mutton is what this biome hands out most. Behind it in the same draw come Pig on 25 percent for porkchops, Chicken on 25 percent for chicken and feathers and Cow on 20 percent for beef and leather.

An old growth birch forest gives you the same birch logs as the ordinary one but on much taller trunks, so a single tree yields far more wood per trip. If you are gathering birch for a large build, this is the version to look for.

The animals are the same four, cows, pigs, sheep and chickens, and the biome carries no structure of its own before the 26.3 camp, but trail ruins can generate in it, which is one of only six biomes where that happens.

This is one of the twenty one biomes with a different name on the other edition. Java calls it old_growth_birch_forest; on Bedrock you have to type birch_forest_mutated, the name Java used when the biome was still called Tall Birch Forest.

The climate is the same on both sides at 0.6 temperature and 0.6 downfall, and Bedrock keeps a second one of these too: birch_forest_hills_mutated, known on Java as Tall Birch Hills until 1.18.

Old Growth Birch Forest has not always been called that. Java used the name Tall Birch Forest for 19 releases, from 1.13 through 1.17.1, and switched to Old Growth Birch Forest in 1.18. Both names describe the same biome, the same blocks and the same spawns, so a guide written before 1.18 still applies here.

The name Old Growth Birch Forest has stood for 32 releases since then, and the biome itself is older than either name: it dates back to 1.7.2.

Old Growth Birch Forest is on the Adventuring Time list, the advancement whose text reads "Discover every biome" while it really means 56 of the 67. Old Growth Birch Forest sits in the temperate group, 16 biomes strong.