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Sugar Maple Across the lane north of the beech is an old sugar maple with an atypical concentration of heavy horizontal limbs emanating from its ashy gray trunk. Its leaves are completely normal, and color brightly in autumn. The chief attributes of this species are its major role as an important component of forests in much of eastern North America, its warm orange fall color, its highly useful wood, and its sweet sap. When the trees are leafless in late winter, their sap rises and descends with the temperature, and people extract it to use in making syrup or sugar, whose maple flavor is one of the unique delights of life. Our climate is too warm in winter for commercially worthwhile sap harvest, but the trees grow well here. |
