Sugar Maple

A deciduous forest tree (Acer saccharum) native to eastern North America, tapped each late winter for its sap, which is boiled down into maple syrup, the region's signature sugar crop and one of the few major sugar sources harvested from a temperate forest tree rather than a field crop. Canada, particularly the province of Quebec, and the northeastern United States account for the great majority of world production, with sap collected from managed stands known as sugarbushes. The tradition of tapping sugar maples for sap predates European colonization, having been practiced by Indigenous peoples of the region long before it was adopted and commercialized by settlers.