Sugar Maple
Sugar Maple Leaves
I’ve been writing a series on what I think of as the iconic trees Wisconsin’s Chippewa River Valley; the eastern white pine, sugar maple, and paper birch. Last week I wrote about the eastern white pine; today I write about the sugar maple.
The evolution of the sugar maple is similar to that of the eastern white pine. Changing climate and the advances and retreats of the Ice Age periodically shrank the range of the ancestors of the maples. Their ranges were broken into geographically-separate communities. The trees in the different communities somtetimes evolved into different species. After the last continental ice sheet retreated, the eastern woodlands were left with a number of maple species. One of them was the sugar maple.
The sugar maple is the tree that provides so much stunning color to autumn in the north woods. It has been tapped for maple syrup and sugar for millennium. It is important to the ecology of the eastern woodlands; providing food and shelter for many birds, mammals, and insects. White-tailed deer, moose, porcupine, squirrels and snowshoe hare commonly eat the bark, twigs, or fruit of the sugar maple. Songbirds make homes int the sugar maple and use it as a food source.
Native Americans, the Ojibwa in the upper Chippewa Valley, used sugar maple sap and sugar in their cooking. They made vinegar out of the sap and use it along with maple sugar to cook sweet and sour meat. The sap was used in fermented or sweet beverages. The Ojibwa used the wood for bowls and other implements.
The sugar maple is continues to be tapped today in the Chippewa River Valley for syrup. It is a valuable hardwood with various uses, including furniture, paneling, flooring, interior trim and veneer,
