Maple Syrup and Maple Bark

by Jeanne Siviski

Can I tap this tree?

I could, if I wanted to tap a red maple. Some people prefer the taste of syrup produced from red maples. It takes more work, though as red maples have a lower sugar content. It takes about 50 to 60 gallons of red maple sap as opposed to 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

Just looking at the bark of a young tree, it can be difficult to distinguish red and sugar maples. Both start off with smooth, grey bark. In his book, Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, Michael Wojtech describes young sugar maple bark as “crackled, like old paint.” He describes mature sugar maples as “gray to brown. Vertical strips separate from the trunk and often curl away on one side. The surface of these strips remains crackled. The strips continue to break into irregularly shaped sections and grow thicker and more plate-like over time.”

     Trying to identify trees by their bark can feel at first like trying to crack a difficult code.  Wojtech provides a section in his book on bark structure to help decipher that code.  “As wood thickens,” Wojtech writes, “it pushes out against the slower-growing bark that surrounds it.  The way bark adapts to this pressure differs in each species.  Does the bark expand to accommodate the growth of wood, or do outer layers evenly split apart?  What shapes do outer layers form as they break apart?”

     The season for tapping maple trees this year has winded down.  Tell-tale red of red maple buds can be seen at the tips of branches.  Red maples will flower before the leaves form, while sugar maples flower as leaves are forming.  And once the distinctly different leaves unfurl,  a lot of guess work is removed.

     Additional information about red and sugar maples can be found in Forest Trees of Maine, a publication of the Maine Forest Service.