Maple Trees
by Eliza Yetter
(written in 2003 / revised 2007)

Also known as Sugar Maple, River Maple, Ashleaf Maple, Box Elder, Florida Maple, Hedge Maple, Mountain Maple, Norway Maple, Siberian Maple, Striped Maple, Sycamore Maple, Moosewood, Black Maple, Soft Maple, Black Sugar Maple, Chalk Maple, Carolina Red Maple, Drummond Red Maple, Japanese Maple, Rocky Mountain Maple, Bigleaf Maple, Vine Maple, Hard Maple, Rock Maple, and White-Barked Sugar Maple.

Maples are one of the most useful trees we have. All maples have a sugar-rich sap but the main three maples used for syrup are the Sugar Maple, the Black Maple, and the Norway Maple.

The Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) is most often used to make maple syrup even though any of the maples listed above can be used to make an edible syrup.

The trees are tapped for syrup in either late winter or early spring. It usually takes 30 to 40 gallons of sap to be boiled down into one gallon of syrup. A large maple tree can yield 3 to 6 pounds of sap a year.

Do not tap trees with trunks smaller than a 10 inch diameter. This could damage the tree and the yield is small.

It is said that an American Indian girl discovered the sweetness of maple sap when she drank rainwater that had collected in a pocket near the trunk of a maple tree.

Within Native American tradition, maple groves were owned by the clans. In the Woodland tribes, it was the women and children who gathered the maple sap. This activity was treated like a holiday with much talk and fun play.

Aside from the sap, the boiled leaves of the maple have been used as poultices for boils.

Not only do people benefit from this tree but the animals do as well. Chipmunks and squirrels eat the seeds. Birds use the leaves and seed stems for nest building.

Maple trees are all-giving trees. They are an embodiment of the Goddess who nurtures us all.