Sugar bush refers to a

forest stand A forest stand is a contiguous community of trees sufficiently uniform in composition, structure, age, size, class, distribution, spatial arrangement, site quality, condition, or location to distinguish it from adjacent communities. A forest is ...

of maple trees which is utilized for maple syrup. This was originally an Indigenous camp set up for several weeks each spring, beginning when the ice began to melt and ending when the tree buds begin to open. At a traditional sugarbush, all the trees were hand tapped and the sap was boiled over wood fires. The Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) peoples have been doing sugarbush for generations and consider the process both a part of food and of medicine. The tree canopy is dominated by

sugar maple ''Acer saccharum'', the sugar maple, is a species of flowering plant in the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It is native to the hardwood forests of eastern Canada and eastern United States. Sugar maple is best known for being the prim ...

black maple ''Acer nigrum'', the black maple, is a species of maple closely related to '' A. saccharum'' (sugar maple), and treated by some authors as a subspecies of it, as ''Acer saccharum'' subsp. ''nigrum''. Identification can be confusing due to the t ...

. Other tree species, if present, form only a small fraction of the total tree cover. In the Canadian provinces of

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

and

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

, and in some

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

states, many sugar bushes have a sugar shack where maple syrup can be bought or sampled. The maples are tapped for their

maple sap Maple syrup is a syrup made from the sap of maple trees. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in late winter and early spring. Maple tre ...

in early spring, whenever the weather has warmed so that day-time temperatures are above freezing – – while night-time temperatures remain below freezing. The tapping period ends when the supply of maple sap ceases, as when night-time temperatures begin to be above freezing, or when the tree produces metabolites to facilitate tree bud development (which will give syrup an off flavor)--whichever comes first. After the tapping period, some maple sugar bushes experience a profusion of spring wildflowers which take advantage of unobstructed sunlight before the maple leaves emerge. In summer, a healthy maple sugar bush is luxuriant and shady. Autumn leaves are colorful, especially on the sugar maples.

External links

"Historic pictures of the sugar bush at the University of Vermont's Maple Research Center"
published February 10, 2010, University of Vermont, Bailey/Howe Library, Special Collections. Forests Maple {{Sapindales-stub