[Artemisia] Maple Syrup and tapping trees: a cautionary note

[Cat Clark]

I count myself lucky to have actually seen sugar maple tapping and other
pieces of the maple syrup production process when I was a kid. FYI: it takes
somewhat more than 200 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of grade A - light
fancy (former grade AAA) maple syrup.

Tapping trees for their sap, which was then made into useful economic
products, goes back to classical antiquity.  So, yes, tree tapping is
period.

But there's a major caveat here, which also bridges a small oversight in the
original post:

Period tree tapping was targetted towards conifiers, especially pine trees
and larches.  But the saps of conifers are almost uniformly inedible and
some are notably toxic.  So don't be tapping the western larch (grows
throughout Artemisia) thinking to get something yummy...because what you'll
get is the base substance for making period (and modern) turpentines!

Now the larch family of trees...here's a bunch designed to fool you and yes,
there are larches in them 'thar mountains of Artemisia.  Why the cautionary
note?  Because larches are deciduous despite being more closely related to
pines and fir than to maples and aspens.  So just in case you were thinking
of tapping some trees and playing with sap, please id your targetted trees
first.

Okay, I'll fess up that there are also some deciduous trees that are not
conifers which have nasty saps.  Like the terebinth tree of Mediterranean
Europe (source of "Cyprian" turpentine, one of the three major turpentine
varieties of the middle ages).  Though to be honest, those are a minority.
 But still, it pays to be careful, and (warning: major whammy alert for A&S
competition entrants everywhere) DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE STARTING YOUR
PROJECT!!!

Ahem...anyway, I did find the original post on tree saps really very
interesting, as it opened up venues for me to explore in the world of "nifty
things you can get from tree saps" that I never knew before but will now
definitely go and play with some more, but this time around with trees other
than those that produce gums, resins, tars, pitches, varnishes and
turpentines...

And as a bonus factoid about tree sap that all you Estrella-goers may want
to contemplate on your way down to Atenveldt: the mesquite tree's sap dries
to a hard substance that is essentially the same compositionally and
behaviorally as gum arabic.  So all you scribes, why pay your hard-earned
greenbacks to places like John Neal and Sinopia for gum arabic when you can
go harvest some for free out in a nearby desert???

ttfn
Therasia
(not dead yet)