Maple

a genus including about fifty shrubs and trees of temperate North America and north India. Maples have fragrant, inconspicuous flowers and winged seeds. In falling, the seeds whirl to some distance from the parent tree, especially if there be a breeze. Maple woods are satiny in appearance and differ greatly in hardness. The wood of the hard, rock, curly, or sugar maple is exceedingly dense and hard. A cord of dry hard maple weighs over two tons. Bird's-eye maple is simply hard maple with a wavy grain. It takes a beautiful finish and is in demand for chamber furniture, desks, cabinets, and tables. Unless some other is specified, maple refers to the species of eastern North America from which maple sugar is made. Maple trees are tapped when snow is going off by boring or cutting into the cambium layer. The sap "runs" freely and is conveyed by short spouts or "spiles" into buckets or troughs placed for the purpose. The sap is collected twice a day or as often as may be required, and is boiled down in kettles hung on poles over fires or in vats placed on furnaces. When the sap has been reduced sufficiently by evaporation it is maple syrup. With a little more boiling, and if kept at the right temperature, with constant stirring, the syrup turns into granulated maple sugar. For an account of the pleasures of "sugaring off," read Charles Dudley Warner's Being a Boy.

Four gallons of sap should make a pound of sugar. A favorable season should yield from two to eight pounds per tree, dependent on the length of time the sap runs and the kind of weather. A continuation of frosty nights and. bright warm mornings makes a successful season. Vermont is the banner maple state, though the maple sugar district extends from Maine westward on both sides of the Great Lakes to Minnesota and far southward in the mountains. The annual maple production is estimated at 2,000,000 gallons of syrup and 12,000,000 pounds of sugar.

The flow of sap before the frozen ground permits the drawing of moisture through the roots, and before sap has begun its natural flow to the leaves, is to be explained by the action of the sun in expanding the liquids of the tree. A warm bright morning thaws and expands the sap that has stood in the tree over winter. It rushes out through the incision. A chill breeze or a cool night reduces the pressure of the sap and stops the flow instantly. Maple groves have little underbrush. "The sugar maple is remarkable for a clean ankle," says Thoreau.

See Sugar; Adulteration