Real Maple Syrup: Part Three

Eastern North American Maples: A Brief Guide To Sugary Goodness

I wanted to cover all the syrup trees in one post, but these fine trees deserve more attention and better pictures than what I can give them.  I've lived around these trees most of my life, and yet I always seem to focus on the pines, spruce, fir, etc.  For now then, a shorter look at the individual maples, starting with a whole post for the top tree:

Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum)

This, without a doubt, is the best tree to draw sap from, by far.  The map included in the last post, in fact, is pretty much biased towards the best terroir for the noble Sugar Maple, to the expense of the other trees.  To be fair, this is a maple almost made to work with the cycles of frost and thaw.  Few others, if indeed truly any, trees germinate at only two degrees above freezing.  That's right, our little friends sprout when it is 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and not much warmer.  This is not to say that they are a true northern tree; while they can handle extreme lows, they do need some decent length of summer heat to truly make it.  They are a species that needs the sun, and also a species that needs the cold, like their frequent companions the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus). 

The range of the noble Acer Saccharum.  Thanks again, USGS!

In pre-colonial times, many moister forested areas in the eastern-central part of North America would have featured a dense canopy of Sugar Maples towered over by White Pines the equal of some of the most amazing giant trees out west.  In the fall, one imagines how amazing the bright orange foliage would have been in contrast with the towering, swaying pines.  Many of the first colonial residents in virgin forest areas left awe-struck accounts.

Oh, did I mention they turn orange?  Sadly I have no pictures to really do it justice...

Taken at Maybury State Park.  Maybury has lots of excellent second-growth beech-maple forest, as well as some of the furthest southern Tamarack swamps.  These are northern extensions into what otherwise starts to turn hot and dry with oak savannas and tallgrass prairie. 

With the exception of the Sassafras (Sassafras Albidum), the other maples, and the sumacs, no tree comes close to sheer brilliance.  One imagines that the First Born and then the colonial arrivals took notice of such brilliance and figured something special must be in the Sugar Maple.  In Vermont, home of the supposed best syrup ever (I will never let it go, Green Mountain guns at my door or otherwise), the spectacular autumn show which makes Bostonians and New Yorkers jam up their expressways in search of colored leaves is pretty much made by mountains of orange trees pocked by smaller concentrations of red and yellow.  The Adirondacks and Opeongo Laurentians (Algonquin), on the other hand, also feature a lot more lakes, somewhat darker skies, and a higher inclusion of northern conifers.  Alright, alright, so Vermont looks nice too.  Anyway, even further south where you get more southerly elements as well as a lot more beech trees in the mix, the noble tree still manages to steal the show. 

Maybury State Park again.  That is the same second-growth beech-maple forest back there, while the front is a reclaimed field turned into a prairie restoration; the soil and tree cover in the immediate area points to a moisture level that would have made most of this still forest.  You can easily see in this picture how Sugar Maples tend to stand out as the dominant species.  I did not make it over to successfully identify the bright yellow foliage.

The First Born probably made the stuff, inspired by the orange leaves, well into Tennessee, as long as the odd winter kept things cold enough, long enough, and provided an appropriate thaw.  Obviously, such winters would not be common at lower elevations, and to this day commercial production of syrup from any tree ceases much farther south than the Great Lakes basin.  That said, the Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, and colonials certainly made syrup along the northern forest extensions along the Appalachians.  Sugar Maple would be the primary choice for such an activity, considering as how most other reliable and tasty maple species such as Silver and Red (next post) tend to be lowland, river loving species.  That said, while the syrup would come from higher than where most people would dwell, and the southern Appalachians have the same problem that the ocean-proximate New England mountains have: maritime influence.  The Smokies, for instance, are temperate rainforests.

Not that Sugar Maple forests are too far off, in some ways, from that sort of lush dampness.  Where the beech trees that so often pair with them start to taper out (Fagus Grandifolia is a tree of vast range, equally at home among the north as it is in Florida and even Mexico), Sugar Maple becomes the dominant tree and starts making the place look really green,

A bit more southern than intended, still at Maybury.  Nevertheless, maples are far more dominant here than beech or most other trees.  The wee plants on the ground are seedlings, the majority of which will die off from lack of light in the next year or so. 

 ...with the exception of heavy leaf litter on the forest floor.  The canopy is thick enough to prevent most light from reaching the forest floor.

Not quite what I was trying to get at (a bit south of what I wanted), but the maples are pretty dominant here.  This was taken in Brighton Recreation Area, one of the most underrated and unmentioned places in Southeastern Michigan in which to get a good look at the native landscape.

In the farther north, the forest then almost looks like something from Ohio or Pennsylvania instead of Laurentian Canada.   

This is about three and a half miles north of Brent, Ontario.  In this moist, loamy environment, the dominating maples cut out competition from the slower growing northern conifers, and in the modern absence of wildfire, never get killed back now and then to let pines get a foothold.

In the future I can probably snap up a shot of what I'm talking about, but these two pictures come close.  The road shot is obviously crowded with underbrush from the extra light.  One can easily see how this species would be very attractive for making syrup, however, as in the ideal situations (see map in previous post), you get what is called a "sugar bush".  This is a naturally provided area with most of the trees being the syrup givers, relatively little underbrush to have to fight through, and the whole thing being remarkably convenient.  I could go on and on about this tree, and I might in the future, but one last item of concern draws us to a close here today: taste.

If you've never had maple syrup, get the hell off your computer and go try some.  If you have, think of the richest, most smooth maple taste you can imagine.  This is syrup and associated products from the Sugar Maple.  In other maples the flavor can sometimes overtake the other delicate features and even the sweetness; not so here.  Everything is perfectly balanced, all the more so if you can get the triple crown of glacially-deposited organic loam, Canadian Shield minerals, and that awesome northern water to make the maple sing with all the voices of heaven.  Needless to say, you don't want the bottle saying "made from x, x, and x in x, x, and x.  I may be biased, but just like in wine, the purity of singular source does not confuse the senses with complications to an already delightful complexity.  Oh, and one more thing that makes it even better?  Paper Birch (Betula Papyrifera) is usually close at hand in such northern places.  While I would never advocate stripping a birch, which usually scars and kills the poor thing, the First Born, especially the Ojibway and Algonquins, who use the entire tree, still have traditionalists who make cooking vessels out of birch bark (they heat the water with red hot stones).  Trust me when I say that the addition of that birch leeching into the syrup enhances it akin to an oak barrel kissing the grapes in wine.

The Forest Will Not Quit

As hard as it is to believe, large areas of the Front Range in Colorado are still ablaze, even under winter low temperatures and heavy snow-pack.

http://www.coloradoconnection.com/news/story.aspx?id=853700#.UQsLdb88CSo

The forests there have been through really rough patches these past few years, with fire being only the end of problems which have started with drought and climate-pushed insects doing quite the number on the spruce-fir forests.  Still, the western montane forests are incredibly resilient and have to deal with "normal" conditions that make life difficult enough.  Extremely low normal winter temperatures, intense solar radiation, and next to nothing for soil in many locations mean that only the best of the best can even establish here, and they do it well, even when it seems to us that they are struggling miniatures:

Rocky Mountain National Park.  The insect ravaged forests are all those gray-brown patches on the opposite slopes.  You can see a few trees even up here near the treeline.

 

Fire in Algonquin

As noted in an earlier post, wildfires often have a bad reputation.  Ever since the days of Smokey Bear and Bambi, people have been taught to fear forest fires and work to prevent them from, among other things, harming the poor animals of the woods.  While this is a noble intention, it can also be a bit misguided, as fire is part of the natural cycle and can help to regenerate the land.  We do, of course, want to suppress wildfires that threaten communities, even the ones that probably should have been built with more defensible space in mind.  No one in their right mind should say that we ought to have let Boulder, Colorado Springs and other Colorado communities burn down.  For that matter though, sometimes we build too far into nature's path, as in southern California's foothills, and set ourselves up for disaster.  In the realm of the wild, our mismanagement of fire conditions, such as in Yellowstone in the decades leading up to the 1988 fires, can result in calamity beyond what was naturally expected.  So to has Algonquin suffered from misunderstanding this natural resource, at least until recently.

With the coming of the timber interests came a desire to save the forest, either for harvests or conservation, as noted in the history of Algonquin we have explored.   Sadly, the desire to suppress all fires came in tandem with a grand increase of fires due to human carelessness.  Man seemed to be outdoing nature in the realm of fire starting until the 1930's, when aerial surveillance of the park began.   Eyes in the skies were able to call in fires rather quickly, and advancements in fire-fighting techniques have since put most man-made fires in their place.  Still, a careless flick of a cigarette or a forgotten campfire is all that it takes to start burning some underbrush and trunks, which if left unchecked, can transform into a crown fire under dry conditions.  When I was in my early teens, I got to see this happen first hand.

This blurry image was taken back in the 1990's by yours truly, who truly knew little about photography at the time.

A campfire had been smoldering (or simply not put out) by some campers long enough for the carpet of pine and spruce needles to catch on fire and some saplings and even large trunks started burning as well.  While this fire was detected and dealt with before it became more than just a nuisance, it was interesting seeing how even the smallest flame can take advantage of fuel and weather conditions to build into something a bit more problematic.  For that matter, it was also interesting seeing how the area was cleared of such fuels and the underbrush.  Those two spruces there did survive, and I intend to see how far they have come along since then, being relatively more exposed to the sunlight.

This is what many small scale natural fires in Algonquin would most likely be like.  Lightning would cause most of them, and the rains in such storms would often keep the damage in check.  Nevertheless, "dry" storms are not rare in the area, and Algonquin's combination of flammable pines and well-drained soils mean that somewhat arid conditions are never out of the question in all but the wettest years.  The higher western side of Algonquin would be less prone to these small-scale fires, owing to the 45+ inches of precipitation common to the region, as well as the less flammable mixed forests present there.  The eastern side, however, is a world unto itself, the lands there being largely coniferous forests growing on sandy soils with most years seeing as little as 25 inches of precipitation, conditions which are similar to the eastern High Plains, albeit with far less high temperature extremes.

The western area could expect to see a really good fire every 500 years or so, canopy opening events which were responsible for creating the pre-settlement conditions of towering White Pines sticking above the maples.  The pines would emerge from the charred, sun-baked soils before the maple seedlings, and the supercanopy would in turn attract lightning for future fires.  Smaller scale fires would reproduce the pine growing conditions on a smaller scale, offering clearings which could support a pine or two.  Other than wind events, this would be how the pines would make their way into existence without being smothered by maples.

The eastern area could expect a really good fire every 250-500 years or so, events that would actually be required to regenerate the Jack Pines.  Owing to the soil conditions and less precipitation, maples and other deciduous trees (minus possibly some oaks) would be left behind as the pines and some spruces would pretty much dominate the scene again.  Smaller scale fires would burn away ground growth, sometimes producing pine barrens/savannas, sometimes clearing the ground of fuel build up, actually preventing larger fires.

The last great natural wildfire which burned through everything from crown to ground cover that took out a good portion of Algonquin was apparently in 1780.  Growth scars on old growth pines (the supercanopy could have survived even a devastating crown fire) indicate that a broad area centered on the lower Petawawa Valley burned, leaving behind a smoke plume that winds carried over Quebec and New England, enough so that the sky was apparently as dark as night during the day.  This is called the Dark Day of New England and is responsible for a great amount of religious development and population migration.  People of the time imagine the dark skies as a sign of the end times approaching, which kindled growth in new American forms of Christianity, a post for another time.

How close is Algonquin to the next "big one"?  We can't be certain, especially since we still tend to put out large fires except in specially designated areas where burns are allowed to run their course.  Algonquin could benefit from a large fire, and the land is certainly able to host such an event.  That said, while the ultimate results of such a fire would be beneficial to the area, fire is still largely an accidental thing that occurs naturally under very specific conditions, to say nothing of the psychological impact it has on those who live, work, and play in the forest.  Like all natural forces, it is best respected, handled with care, and understood as a complex, rather than simple, agent.