Flow of Sap

The amount of sap which can be withdrawn from living trees furnishes, not indeed a measure of the quantity of water sucked up by their roots from the ground—for we cannot extract from a tree its whole moisture—but numerical data which may aid the imagination to form a general notion of the powerful action of the forest as an absorbent of humidity from the earth.

The only forest tree known to Europe and North America, the sap of which is largely enough applied to economical uses to have made the amount of its flow a matter of practical importance and popular observation, is the sugar maple, Acer saccharinum, of the Anglo-American Provinces and States. In the course of a single "sugar season," which lasts ordinarily from twenty-five to thirty days, a sugar maple two feet in diameter will yield not less than twenty gallons of sap, and sometimes much more. This, however, is but a trifling proportion of the water abstracted from the earth by the roots during this season, when the yet undeveloped leaves can hardly absorb an appreciable quantity of vapor from the atmosphere; for all this fluid runs from two or three incisions or auger holes, so narrow as to intercept the current of comparatively few sap vessels, and besides, experience shows that large as is the quantity withdrawn from the circulation, it is relatively too small to affect very sensibly the growth of the tree. The number of large maple trees on an acre is frequently not less than fifty, and of course the quantity of moisture abstracted from the soil by this tree alone is measured by thousands of gallons to the acre. The sugar orchards, as they are called, contain also many young maples too small for tapping, and numerous other trees—two of which, at least, the black birch, Betula lenta, and yellow birch, Betula excelsa, both very common in the same climate, are far more abundant in sap than the maple—are scattered among the sugar trees; for the North American native forests are remarkable for the mixture of their crops.

The sap of the maple, and of other trees with deciduous leaves which grow in the same climate, flows most freely in the early spring, and especially in clear weather, when the nights are frosty and the days warm; for it is then that the melting snows supply the earth with moisture in the justest proportion, and that the absorbent power of the roots is stimulated to its highest activity.

When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves begin to show themselves beneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier, the thirst of the roots is quenched, and the flow of sap from them to the stem is greatly diminished.