SC - Can someone help her?

Mon Nov 22 08:30:55 PST 1999

Ras writeth:
> I would most like to see any evidence you may have which might show a sugar 
> maple growing in the Miami area. Since the trees must freeze in the winter, 
> causing the sap to stop flowing in the tree. The thaw in the early spring 
> once again allows the sap to flow. This first flowing of sap lacks the 
> bitterness that develops as the season progresses. SAFECO, the weather 
> conditions in Miami are not in tune with the natural cycle that allows maple 
> sap to be used for sugar. I have NOT studied this area so I can give no 
> references but as a gardener I am more than a little curious. ;-)

I wish to respectfully take several issues with your assertions:

1) If you have ever grown Oranges in Florida, you know that freezing is a regular
and undesireable occurrence, even in those climes. The potential losses form early 
frosts in citrus farms are large enough that farms sometimes actually heat the 
orchards with fires, and use smudgepots to coat the fruit with soots and tars to 
provice an extra layer of protection against frost damage.

2) Ras, are you saying that the leaves of maples do not fall in Florida?
As long as the leaves fall, the trees go dormant in winter. To do this, they 
store sugar in the roots. When the trees set the next years buds, and start the 
production of flowers for procreation, they need energy to do this, since the 
tree has no active leaves to fuel the process, it needs to pump the sugar 
stored in the roots. This happens regardless of the temperature. Freezing nights 
and thawing days just happen to be the optimal conditions for getting the 
highest concentration of sugar in the sap. since the sap cannot flow at night, and 
the sap remains in the roots, in contact with the sugar stores. If the sap contines to 
run, the sugar comes up but much more diluted, and after a couple of week or so 
may be so dilute that the sap cannot be used at all. It is essential therefore to 
get to and tap a tree as soon as the sap begins to flow, to get the highest sugar 
concentration. This is extraordinarily difficult to judge without the more obvious 
physical signs of a thaw. One would have to be extremely in tune with the subtle
signs of the environment and tree, when in a non freezing climate. I daresay 
that, making his home and getting his living in the forests, the Timucuans were
quite able to attune themselves thusly.

3) Florida is not only the Miami climate. It has many climates, and the areas 
North of Lake Okichobee (sp?) exhibits a markedly different climate from 
the South of Florida, which is affected mightily by the Everglades, and the 
Gulf current. I am not saying that that different climate is subarctic, but it is 
different. 

4) The old Spanish territory of Florida included much of the north Gulf coast, 
and extended well up into what is now Georgia and included a part of the 
extreeme southen range of the Apalachians. It wasnt untill after 1595 or so
that the area north of what is now the Georgia-Florida border north to Virginia 
was made a separate Spanish colony with the name "Apalche". At the time of
Hawkins' journey, "Florida" was all the North American coast south of Carolina
aroung the Gulf to the Missisippi. 
Never the less, since Hawkins was looking for the French Heugenots at 
Ft Caroline, in what is now Jacksonville, in the very northeast of Florida, 
I think that local maple sugar is not completely impossible, just not comercially
viable.The general climate of Jacksonville is much more temperate than that 
of Miami.

brandu

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