The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-06-03
Dame Natures Sugar Works.

The laboratory in which maple sugar
is made is not the evaporator house,
but the maple leaf. 1t is there that are
combined the elements that make up
the constitution of sugar. The prime
object of the process is not the tickling
of our palates, but to furnish material
for the growth of the tree, as these
same sugar acknowledgement, hydro
gen and carbon-combined in differ
ent proportion, form the wood, bark,
leaves and fruit. Water is composed
of oxygen and hydrogen in certain in
variable proportions. Air is oxygen
and nitrogen, and mixed with it, but
not in combination, is carbon in form
of carbonic acid gas, which is COM
pound of carbon and oxygen. The sap
wood of the maple is mostly made up
of minute cells closed on all sides, but
with walls so thin that the sap can cir
culate through them. There are also
ducts, with thicker walls, reaching from
the ends of the roots to the leaves,
either open or with few thin parti-
tons easily penetrated. The cells and
most of the ducts close up as the wood
grows old, so the circulation is more
rapid in the newer growth.
By capillary attraction the ducts,
when free from frost, are constantly
drawing up water from the ground,
holding in solution traces of mineral
salts, some of which 90 into the struct-
ure of the new growth. The first
water that rises in the ducts in the
spring proceeds to wake up the dor
mant buds. After time they begin to
swell, urged on by the growing warmth,
and the pressure of the water, which
finds in the buds supply of wood ele.
ments deposited there the previous
autumn, dissolves them and sets them
to work, starting the new growth of
leaves and wood above the buds. The
leaves soon get their organs in work
ing order and the new years sugar.
making begins. The leaves breathe in
carbon from the air, combine it with
part of the oxygen and hydrogen of
the duct water, and sugar is the result.
The water takes this and starts on it's
course down the sap wood by way of
the cells, leaving its eleme nts on the
way to thicken the partitions of the
old cells and to form new layers OF wood
and bark, but its work does not end
when it reaches the earth, for the large
mass of roots must also be supplied
with material for new wood, bark and
rootlets.
Now we must 60 back bit. In the
previous autumn, in the last of the
growing season, the later products of
sap, holding building elements, were
packed away tightly in the cells for the
next springs early use, so that some
time before the duct water begins to
move the sun warns up the trunk and
there is pressure of the sap to get on
its way-al the greater if the base Of
the trunk is frozen, as it usually is in
good sap weather mornings. Tap the
tree at this time and there will be
rush of sap toward the opening from
every layer Of wood penetrated, but it
will be gradual movement, for the
multitude of cell walls have to be
passed before it can get free. Later
on the ducts begin to carry up water
from this earth Gas before described),
which mixes in the spout holes with
the descending sap, reducing its
strength and supplying the salts that
make so much trouble for the sugar
men in the last of the run. AS the
season progresses the checks of the
freezing nights and the consequent
spurts of the next morning cease, but
though the outflow of sap subsidies the
circulation in the tree continues
through the growing season, and stops
only when the leaves can no longer do
their work.
The leaves of many other trees and
plants are also engaged in sugar max
ing, and the innumerable varieties OF
fruit, gums, resins, starches, oils,
fibers, etc., produced in the vegetable
kingdom have the same elements that
go into sugar and wood tissues, each in
different combination, and every va
rtety of leaf has it's own peculiar or
ganism for the manufacture of its
special product for the growth of the
mother plant and for the food, clothing
and healing of the human and other
animal races.