March 16, 2004
"Sweet-cicle"
The temperature was just right today for freezing the sap from this damaged red maple (Acer rubrum) twig before it dripped to the ground. The liquid drop on the tip of the icicle was quite sweet.

Maple syrup and maple sugar are made from the sap of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum), but all maples can be tapped and their sap boiled down to make a sweet syrup. Historically, sugar maples were an abundant tree in the northeast. Native Americans showed European colonists how to tap the trees and either boil down the sap or condense it by allowing it to partially freeze and removing the ice to leave behind a more concentrated sugar solution.