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Maple Syrup
Appears in
Published 2004
During the six-week “maple moon” of consistently warm, sunny days and cold nights in late winter, sap flows through sugar maples (Acer saccharum) and black maples (Acer nigrum) from eastern Canada to Minnesota and as far south as Kentucky. Since at least the mid-1500s, North American Indians and early European forest travelers drank the clear, barely sweet liquid, which was at times their only source of nourishment.
Anthropologists and historians debate the point, but it is probable that the Indians were the first both to tap maple trees and to distill their sap into syrup. Sap was collected through carved wooden spigots (“spiles”) inserted into ax cuts in the tree. The colonists learned both the method of making syrup and an appreciation for the sweetener from the Indians.